The Case For Urgent Care Centers In The United States

Urgent care locations are springing up all throughout the country of the United States, visited by more than three million people in this country alone over the course of just one week. Staffed by as many as twenty thousand doctors in more than seven thousand and three hundred different locations, there is no doubt about it that urgent care centers are on the rise – and proving to be a viable alternative to the emergency room.

But many people are unfamiliar with exactly what an urgent care does. If you are someone who is asking what is urgent care used for, you are certainly not alone. In fact, the question of what is urgent care used for is what this brief look into the world of urgent care in the United States will seek to answer.

To put it briefly, the answer to the question of what is urgent care used for is a simpler one than many would realize and it is this: pretty much anything, as long as it is not a life or death situation. From difficulty breathing to wound repair, the question of what is urgent care used for can be answered with any number of medical conditions.

And urgent care centers can often treat more severe medical problems than many people realize. After all, up to eighty percent of all urgent care centers in this country have the capabilities for diagnosing and treating fractures. And up to seventy percent of walk in clinics have the right tools and medical professionals on board to be able to administer IVs in cases of dehydration, something that would otherwise often necessitate an emergency room visit.

Of course, urgent care centers can deal with any number of smaller maladies, and this is the answer that people expect when they ask what is urgent care for. Sprained ankles – of which there are twenty five thousand each and every day in the United States alone – and basic wound repair procedures can both be handled in a family urgent care location, and fast medical treatment for conditions like ear infections, urinary tract infections, and the flu can also be given.

Many people will still worry, however, if they should go to the emergency room instead. In most cases, the answer is very much an emphatic no. For one, an astonishing less than five percent (only about three percent, to be more exact) of all cases seen in urgent care locations throughout the country ever needed to be transported to a hospital. On the other hand, it has been found that up to sixty five percent of cases that were seen in the emergency room could have been instead thoroughly and skillfully treated in any given urgent care location. Answering the question of what is urgent care used for could end up keeping people who are unnecessarily in hospitals out of them.

And there are many reasons for this to be ideal. For one, hospitals and emergency rooms in particular are often overcrowded. In fact, your average hospital waiting room will have a wait time of at least one hour before you can even be seen by a nurse. In some places and on some days, you might even wait longer than an hour to get the medical attention that you are in need of.

The typical urgent care location, on the other hand, is a completely different story. In more than half of all urgent care locations in the United States (about sixty percent of them, to be more exact), the wait time before being seen by a doctor or nurse is typically no more than fifteen minutes. By the time a full hour has elapsed, the typical urgent care center patient has likely already been seen, treated, and is on their way back home.

From asking what is urgent care used for to what are the benefits of urgent care centers, the questions surrounding urgent care centers are vast but will likely be answered as urgent care centers grow more prominent in the years to come in the U.S.