Throughout the course of the last couple of decades, urgent care centers have made a credible name for themselves all throughout the United States. For a great many people, urgent care locations have become the top place to get treatment for a wide number of different medical conditions. After all, more than three million people are serviced by these urgent care centers on a weekly basis, a number that is only likely to grow and grow as urgent care clinics become more and more widespread in the United States as a whole.
Urgent care centers, after all, can provide the ideal alternative to both hospital emergency room care as well as to your general care practitioner. Unfortunately, many general care practitioners are not always readily able to provide care in the evenings and on the weekends. The vast majority of all walk in urgent care centers, on the other hand, do offer at least some weekend hours – even if they are limited. This is something that holds true for up to 85% of all walk in clinics found throughout the United States.
In addition to this, the average urgent care center will provide faster care for less money, at least in direct comparison to a typical emergency room experience. You should always go to an emergency room (as fast as possible) when experiencing any kind of medical emergency that necessitates immediate emergency care. However, there are many conditions that the average urgent care clinic can provide. Urgent care treatment is a good deal more advanced and capable than a good many people realize.
For instance, the standard of care for injuries is higher than ever. Minor fracture treatment has become more than possible in more than three quarters (around 80%, to be just a bit more exact) of all walk-in clinics and urgent care locations. While more serious fractures will likely still need treatment from a nearby hospital, less serious cases can be quite easily dealt with at the closest walk-in medical care clinic.
Cases of dehydration can also usually be assessed at a walk-in medical clinic. How can this dehydration occur? Dehydration can stem from just about any illness, but food poisoning is known for causing varying levels of dehydration. After all, food poison, even mild food poisoning, can make it hard to keep just about anything down, even water. And food poisoning is quite common all throughout the United States. Over the course of just one single year, it is likely that nearly 50 million people will deal with some type of food poisoning.
In many of these cases, the food poisoning in question will clear up on its own. For most people who experience food poisoning, the illness, as unpleasant as it is, will pass in only just a day or two with little harm done overall. However, this is not the case for everyone. Thanks to a variety of factors, food poisoning can sometimes become more dangerous than you thought was possible. It does, as data shows, cost up to 3,000 total lives on a yearly basis – and that’s just within the scope and scale of the United States.
So how do you mitigate this danger? Primarily, by going in to seek medical help if you feel that you are becoming dangerously dehydrated. In many cases, this will mean getting IV fluids from a local multicare urgent care center. If your local multicare urgent care center is not able to provide you with IV fluids, they can transfer you to a local hospital where you will be further available to get help. This help might just end up saving your life. When it comes to matters of your health, it is always better to be safe than to be sorry.
At the end of the day, taking care of your health is a hugely important thing indeed. After all, your health can prove a key defining role in your overall quality of life. Fortunately, urgent care centers all throughout the country are making it easier to get ahold of such medical care, easier than it has ever been before, at least here in the United States. And fortunately, urgent care centers are growing.