When you get hurt or sick, it can be tempting to try to tough it out. After all, going to the doctor can be expensive and inconvenient, two things that make it difficult for many people to really even want to seek medical attention. Fortunately, urgent care clinics have made it easier to seek medical care than ever before, with a variety of urgent care services offered at what is really a reasonable cost (at least in comparison to something like emergency room fees and the like). But what do you need to go in for?
It’s important to remember that many conditions start out very minor but can spiral into being much more serious if they are not dealt with promptly. Infections provide a great example of exactly this. Consider the average urinary tract infection. This type of infection is so common that more than eight million cases of it occur throughout the course of just one single year. Early on, urinary tract infections are able to be treated with a simple round of antibiotics and unless they are recurrent, this is all that will need to be done before moving on with life. However, trying to ignore a UTI is not only very painful, but can be dangerous, as the infection is known to spread to the kidneys when not treated promptly. Therefore, going into your local urgent care location for treatment of a suspected UTI is always best to do as soon as you notice that there is likely a problem.
Going in for the flu is also important to do as soon as you suspect you might have contracted it. Unfortunately, far too many people consider the flu to be a slightly more serious version of the common cold, of which there are one billion of per the course of each and every year. However, this is very much not the case. As a matter of fact, the flu is much more serious, infecting up to one fifth of the total population during particularly bad years. In the 2018 and 2019 flu season alone, more than 20 million people contracted the flu. And many of these people will end up hospitalized or even losing their lives as a result of it, as the flu can result in some very serious complications indeed.
Fortunately, there are steps to take to avoid such complications. If you already have the flu, going into a local urgent care center for an anti viral treatment is a valid and viable option in many parts of this country. And while the anti viral treatment won’t eliminate the illness since the flu is a virus, it will help to mitigate it, reducing the duration and preventing such complications as discussed above from forming and ever becoming a reality. Therefore, taking yourself to a local walk in clinic as soon as you suspect that you might have the flu is a must, as this anti viral treatment is at its most effective the earlier that you take it.
In addition to this, walk in urgent care centers can also provide injury treatments, such as treatments for sprained ankles, which are so very common that more than 20,000 of them will occur in just one day – in just the United States alone, for that matter. Taking an ankle sprain to be examined by one of the 20,000 doctors working for an urgent care center is a good idea, as you don’t know how serious the injury is until it has been subjected to further testing. For many people, the ankle might even have been fractured and they would never have known if they had not gone to a nearby urgent care clinic. Fortunately, more than three quarters of all walk-in clinics have fracture diagnosis and treatment capabilities. And getting the proper testing and treatment can make a world of difference indeed when it comes to the healing process.
At the end of the day, urgent care centers are hugely important in our country – and only growing more so. Already, going to an urgent care center is so popular that up to three million people do it each and every week.
