If you’re looking for quick and comprehensive medical help, consider an urgent care facility in your area. After all, with more than 7,000 found throughout the country by the time that we had reached the year of 2016 and even more growing in the years that have transpired since, urgent care locations are more prevalent than ever before. Already, up to three million people are going to various urgent care locations throughout the course of just one single week, meaning that very nearly one quarter of the American population has been able to visit at least one urgent care facility over the course of the past two years. Since urgent care centers first came onto the seen back in the year of 2000, now just 20 years in the past, their growth has been truly impressive.
Of course, there are many factors behind the growth of the average urgent care facility. For one thing, the level of care that is offered by a walk in clinic is very high. After all, the 20,000 doctors staffing various walk in health clinics are fully certified and trained medical professionals, just as much doctors as the doctors you’d find in the typical emergency room or general care practitioner’s office. When you go to an urgent care facility, you can reasonably expect that you medical issue can be dealt with. After all, only around 3% of all cases seen first in an urgent care facility will ever need to be transferred to a nearby emergency room.
For instance, many cases of the flu will be seen in any given urgent care facility during certain types of the year. While the flu cannot be cured, an anti-viral can be prescribed to reduce symptoms and duration of the illness. This can, in turn, reduce the likelihood that one will develop serious complications from the flu itself, which can lead to issues like pneumonia especially in patients who are at a higher risk, like the very young and the elderly.
Various injuries can also be dealt with in any given urgent care facility or medical walk-in clinic. For many people, basic wound repair is ideally obtained from an urgent care clinic, as going to an urgent care facility will take much less time – and cost much less money – than going somewhere like a local emergency room. This is ideal for wounds that are not life threatening and relatively minor in nature – just serious enough to not be able to deal with it from home. Ankle sprains provide a great example of such an injury. Ankle sprains can range from very minor to much more serious, so getting a questionable ankle sprain looked at and provided with urgent care treatment is something that will prove hugely beneficial to many people. With up to 25,000 cases of ankle sprains occurring over the course of just one day here in the United States, there is no doubting the fact that most doctors working in any given urgent care facility will have seen their fair share of ankle sprain cases. Ankle sprains occurring during sports injuries are common, but so too are ankle sprains that happen as a result of a simple inward rolling, or inversion. In fact, such ankle sprains make up more than three quarters (around 80%, to be just a bit more specific) of all ankle sprains that are sustained.
In many an urgent care facility and walk in medical clinic, urgent care services such as x-rays are available. In an urgent care with an x-ray, even basic fracture care will be possible, something that is now true of at least 80% of all urgent care centers found here in the United States. Being able to go to an urgent care facility to obtain x-ray services is something of a game changer, allowing even more people than ever before to avoid hospital wait times and fees.
All things considered, the role of the typical urgent care facility is only a growing one. As more and more urgent care centers staff the top doctors and provide more medical services than ever before, it is true that the role of the urgent care center is essential.
