There are certain occasions in which you can visit your typical primary care physician. Say you have a minor issue, like a persistent cold or pink eye — this would be a good time to visit your regular doctor. Your annual checkup is a good time to visit your regular doctor as well. However, if you’re experiencing a serious but not life-threatening problem, like a broken bone or burn or severe cut — that might not be the time in which you should sit in a waiting room, hoping to be seen before the hour is over. If you’re having a busy day and you need to get your vaccine done quickly, or simply want a prescription for antibiotics to treat a chest cold — well, that might not be the time to visit a primary care physician either. If you need to be seen quickly and effectively, with a bill that you actually handle — that may be the time to consider an urgent care clinics. Urgent care clinics offer skillful convenient and affordable care for your urgent medical needs. For that matter, your wait won’t be nearly as long as it would be at a doctor’s office or emergency room, and you’ll actually be able to afford the care you receive. Below, we’ll list some of the different types of care you can expect from the best in urgent care services — and hopefully, we’ll demystify the concept of urgent care for you.
1. Pediatric Care
For new parents in particular, having a sick child can be scary. If your child has a runny nose, it may be a cold — but if that runny nose doesn’t go away after a week, you might have more cause for concern. At the same time, it can be a hassle for a working parent to take their child to see a primary care physician. You have to make an appointment ahead of time, and by the time your appointment happens the issue may have cleared itself and — well, the list of inconveniences goes on. Luckily, urgent care centers are known for seeing patients quickly. On average, an urgent care physicians sees about 4.5 patients an hour, though this varies depending on the seriousness of the patient’s medical conditions. For that matter, the wait time to be seen by a physician or mid-level care provider for 60% of urgent care centers is 15 minutes, and 65% of urgent care clinics have a physician on site at all times. This means that your child’s urgent medical needs will be tended to by a skilled medical care provider — and fast.
2. Vaccinations
Tending to urgent medical needs is just one facet of the services that urgent care clinics provide. They’re also great places for you to have your regular medical needs taken care of. If you work in the school system or have a child in school, you know that vaccinations are essentially unavoidable. It’s important that you keep up to date on vaccines — and that you ensure that the rest of your family does — not only for the sake of convenience, but because vaccines are essential to disease prevention. Nobody wants to deal with the flu — but at the same time, nobody wants to wait at their doctor’s office for an hour for a flu shot. The great thing about urgent care clinics is that, when the issue at hand is something as simple as a shot, you’ll most likely be “in an out”.
3. Fracture Care
Most urgent care clinics have about seven exam/treatments rooms, and these can be used to address minor needs like those mentioned about, and urgent medical needs like fracture care. A broken bone can be extremely painful, but it doesn’t always require an emergency room visit (and bill). Many urgent care clinics are equipped to give immediate fracture care. After assessment, it will be determined if you need to visit an emergency room instead — but in many cases, the initial treatment is fairly simple.
