There are many reasons to go to your local urgent care center. For one thing, it’s hugely convenient. Urgent care locations can now be found all throughout the United States, meeting the needs of nearly 90 million people on a yearly basis. Not only do urgent care centers staff upward of 20,000 doctors and other such medical professionals, but they have very short waiting periods as well.
While the local emergency room might have an average wait time of up to one hour (if not beyond it), the typical urgent care clinic will be able to provide you with urgent care treatment much more quickly. In fact, up to 70% of all urgent care centers can provide patients with care in no more than 20 minutes after their arrival. It is not uncommon for a patient to come in, be seen and cared for, and be sent on their way all within the span of just one hour. This is unheard of in the typical emergency room setting, but is something that has become common and even expected at your average urgent care facility.
The breadth of care that you can get at a local walk in clinic is also quite impressive. For instance, many walk in clinics provide a good deal of testing and preventative care. Getting an STD test at a local walk in medical clinic has become common. If you’re sexually active, STD testing is a must, especially if you are not with one set partner for a long period of time. By getting an STD test, you arm yourself with more knowledge about your health on the whole, something that can help you to make good medical decisions. An STD test will be very quick and painless as well, something that spurs on even more people to get an STD test. And when you get an STD test through urgent care services, the STD test is not particularly likely to break the bank either.
In addition to STD testing, urgent cares throughout the country provide a great many flu shots at the beginning of flu season and all throughout it. Getting your flu shot is very important, as it can prevent you from getting the flu or lessen your symptoms if you do still end up getting it down the road (as no flu shot will be 100% effective at preventing all strains of the flu, thanks to the nature of the illness and the process required to create the vaccine).
The flu, after all, is an illness that should be taken seriously. It kills many people even in countries like the United States and hospitalizes even more. And even for those who aren’t put in danger by the flu, it’s a brutal illness that can require a good deal of time away from work. As a matter of fact, more than 15 million workdays (around 17 million to be just a bit more exact) are lost to the flu on a yearly basis – and that’s just here in the United States alone. In total, the spread of the flu ends up costing more than $11 billion in this same span of time. Therefore, getting the flu shot is something likely to be immensely worth it at the end of the day, both on a personal level as well as on a much more universal one.
Going in for a minor illness is also common, especially during hours when the typical doctor’s office is likely to be closed. After all, no one wants to go to the emergency room for something as minor as a sore throat (something that accounts for up to 13 million medical visits over a 12 month period). Going to an urgent care location provides a great alternative for urgent medical care. Not only will the care be good and the wait time short, but the cost of going to urgent cares is certainly going to be less than the cost of going to an emergency room, which has been found to cost, on average, well over $1,000 (and sometimes likely to be even more than this, depending on the visit).
