There are many situations in which you might need urgent care. Sometimes, you will want to go to the emergency room, but what many people have found is that the emergency room is not appropriately named. Many times, people will go there and end up having to wait for hours. This is why it might be a better idea to go to an urgent care center if you have something that needs to be attended to immediately. There are likely many walk-in urgent care centers in your area.
If you have not had success when you have gone to an emergency care hospital, emergency care unit, emergency doctors office, or other similar place, it might be a good idea to either look for some emergency room advice or try an urgent care center instead. Of course, budget is always going to be a consideration, which is why you should make sure that you can afford the care that you are planning to get. If you have insurance, you should try to find a center that accepts whatever insurance you have. If not, you could simply look for the center that will give you the care you need without charging too much money.
Given the American reliance on 24-hour access to hospital emergency rooms, visits have actually increased by 22% over the past 10 years. However, a private study conducted by Miliman showed that 44% to 65% of these visits could have been handled by the staff at an urgent care clinic. This is because Americans tend to visit emergency rooms even when the situation is not life-threatening.
When someone needs flu treatment, has minor burns or back pain, they could wait a long time to see a physician in an emergency room setting. Furthermore, when they receive treatment for these issues, they may pay almost 10 times as much as they would at an urgent care facility.
When you need ER care without the wait, a convenient quality and cost effective ER alternative is an urgent care facility. These clinics usually average 7 exam and/or treatment rooms, and 65% have a physician available on-site all the time.
Another benefit is the waiting time, which may be less than 15 minutes. The American Academy of Urgent Care Medicine states that while it does depend on the severity or acuity of an individual’s situation, the average patient-per-hour ratio is 4.5 patients an hour.
When a case that can be treated by an urgent-care clinic is handled at the hospital emergency room, the average cost may be $2,039. This same situation would only cost an average of $226. While minor lacerations or shortness of breath may be cause for alarm, skillful convenient and affordable care be provided for these and other issues at an urgent care clinic.
Urgent care centers usually operate 7 days a week, and many have extended hours. In addition to making access to care convenient on the weekend, it’s also helpful when individuals have a busy work schedule or are parents that want to make sure their children are too sick to attend school.
The best urgent care services are available at these centers, most of which are owned by a physician or physicians’ group. When weighing the benefits of visiting a local urgent care clinic versus the hospital emergency room, it’s clear that urgent care clinics are an excellent option. Just imagine ER care without the wait and the additional costs associated with it.
