Why Choose Urgent Care?

If you live in an area where urgent care is available, you can count yourself as fortunate. Also sometimes referred to as a minute clinic, a walk-in clinic, or an immediate care facility, medical treatment of this kind can be thought of a bridge between visits to the doctor's office and a trip to the hospital emergency room. When you go to an express care facility, you avoid the long waiting time that you might have to endure at the ER.
Urgent care clinics deal with many medical issues that would otherwise have patients finding their way to the local hospital. Thanks to the introduction of these convenient centers, there is more room at the hospitals for injuries and illnesses that are more serious in nature.
Going to a minute clinic to be looked at by a doctor is generally cheaper for the patient than a trip to the hospital to be seen by an ER physician. As a general rule, the majority of insurance providers charge a lower co-payment for visits at urgent care facilities in comparison to ER visits.
For those who do not live close to their general practitioner's office or a hospital, an urgent care facility offers the flexibility in scheduling that they need. These clinics are generally open early in the morning and close late in the evenings. Many of them offer weekend hours as well. Some of these centers are available on an on-call basis, and, in some areas, they are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
When you visit one of these, an appointment is often not required. This makes it an ideal and convenient choice for medical assistance for so many people. It is also convenient for those patients who develop a health problem when they are away from their home.
The level of care that you can expect from a primary doctor or a hospital is the same that you would receive at a minute clinic. The standards are just as high.
There are numerous conditions that will be treated at an urgent care facility, including:
- Coughs
- Colds
- Sore throats
- Non-life threatening respiratory problems
- Ear infections,
- Cuts
- Sprains,
- Fevers
- Flu symptoms
- Minor skin irritations
- Mild cases of asthma
- Animal bites
- General wound care
There are some medical problems that are symptomatic of a more serious problem and are such that you should head to a hospital right away to be examined. Choking or shortness of breath requires a trip to the ER, as does bleeding that is continuous, severe vomiting (or persistent vomiting), fainting or unconsciousness, and pain or pressure in the chest or abdomen.