How Urgent Care Locations Provide Accessible Health Care

For those without health insurance, looking up urgent care locations near you is probably the best way to get fast and thorough medical care, and is a viable alternative to the emergency room.

The emergency room can often have a wait time of up to an hour, while most urgent care locations (more than half) have an average wait time of only around fifteen minutes, less than half than that of the emergency room. The majority of walk in urgent care locations only take about an hour, total, between waiting and being seen by a doctor, meaning that they are incredibly time efficient. The majority of urgent care locations are also open far more frequently than a traditional doctors office, making them ideal for those who find it difficult to request time off of work to schedule a doctor’s appointment. In fact, more than 60% of all urgent care locations are open before nine in the morning and a considerable amount are also open in the evenings as well as both Saturday and Sunday. In fact, two out of every five are open past nine pm and at least 90% of urgent care locations are open until 7 pm.

Urgent care locations can treat a wide array of medical conditions, from the minor to the more serious. For instance, the vast majority of urgent care centers are able to provide a flu vaccination. Around 70% of all urgent care centers can provide intravenous fluids in cases of dehydration. And aside from simple care for sprains, four out of every five urgent care locations are able to diagnose as well as treat fractures. An urgent care center is also equipped to treat patients with common conditions such as the common cold, the flu, and other respiratory illnesses. Wound care is also common at an urgent care center, and many are able to even provide stitches to minor wounds in need of them.

For those not able to schedule appointments with a primary care physician for whatever reason, urgent care centers and urgent care locations provide a place for these people to receive quality medical treatment from skilled physicians. Nearly 20,000 doctors are employed in an urgent care center, and around half of all urgent care locations are owned by a physician or a group of physicians.