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Here’s How You Choose an Urgent Care Facility

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When you experience a physical injury or illness, it is important to have a plan of action. No one wants the stress of finding the nearest medical urgent care center when they are feeling unwell. Here are a few features to look for during your search for the best local urgent care facility near you.

No One Plans When They’ll Get Injured: Check the Operating Hours.

It is a a spectacular inconvenience to have an urgent issue pop up after normal operating hours. It could be a bad cut from slicing up vegetables around dinnertime, or a child’s fever that worsens on a Saturday morning. On average, the vast majority at roughly 90% of medical urgent care centers are open until at least 7:00pm, with 66% opening up before 9:00am. Some reports have even found that about two out of every five centers are open until 9:00pm. About 40% are open on Saturdays as well, but only 30% stay open for Sunday morning catastrophes.

Look at the open hours when deciding on a medical urgent care facility. You may not have a choice depending on the time your accident or ailment occurs, of course. But knowing ahead of time which one will be open can alleviate some stress.

What Do Other People Think About the Facility?

You can find a review on just about every type of business now. Medical urgent care centers are no different. Other people who have been seen at the facility can comment on the wait times, the level of care they received, the ease of finding the location, and of course the overall cleanliness. Reading reviews can help you compare centers with an amount of details that just using the opening hours and physical location simply cannot.

Some reviews need to be read with a critical eye. Never simply look at the rating system, whether that is computed with numbers or stars. Irate people have access to the internet too. For example, many facilities (60%) may have an average wait time of 15 minutes or less.

Can They Heal What Ails You? Double Check the Care They Offer.

An urgent care center is not an emergency room. No location will be able to offer the intensive degree of care that an actual hospital can. With that in mind, different facilities may offer different treatment options. While one center may be able to treat fractures, another center a couple of blocks away may not.

It is to your benefit to check what is offered and where. This information can be found online, or by calling the facility directly. You may want to have a few locations written down to keep your options clear.

In a crisis, success depends on being able to make the best decision quickly. When that is applied to an urgent situation, but not an emergency, it can be extremely helpful to know where the nearest help is located. Take some time today to look up your local urgent care centers. Review your options, and then settle on the best. Keep those phone numbers and addresses in your phone with the facility’s hours. The next time a crisis pops up, you’ll be ready.

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Where Do You Go When Someone in Your Family Is Sick on a Holiday Weekend?

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It was a wasted weekend. When your teenage daughter came home from her summer school class on Friday she indicated that she did not feel well and spend the rest of the afternoon in her room. When you forced her to come downstairs and join the family for dinner, she ate a few bites but then left the table and headed for the bathroom. For the next two days she was unable to keep anything down. By Sunday afternoon you were really concerned. Knowing that Monday was the Fourth of July made you even more concerned. The pediatrician’s office was going to be closing at 1:00 pm on Monday and would remain closed on Tuesday for the holiday break. Certain that you did not even want to wait to see if you could get in to an early Monday morning appointment, you decided to take your daughter to a local urgent care to see what they could find out.
Several hours later, after the local urgent care was able to administer some intravenous fluids, the staff released your daughter to go home. You felt comfortable knowing that many serious conditions had been ruled out and the diagnosis of a summer flu bug. The IV fluids gave your daughter some of her energy back and though it would be a quiet couple more days before she recovered, you slept well on Sunday night knowing that she had been seen by caring medical professionals. The fact that you could sleep in a little on a Monday morning instead of worrying about getting through to the pediatric office to request an appointment was a relief.
Local Urgent Care Locations Provide Convenient, Flexible Scheduling
Whether you are seeking advice for a strange reaction to an apparent spider bite or you are worried about a teenage daughter with the stomach flu, after hours urgent care services can be a real help. Instead of having to wait to get an appointment at a family pediatrician or physician’s office, a local urgent care can provide the services you require when you need them.
In a time when the Affordable Care Act has provided health care to more people than ever before, it should come as no surprise that the entire medical platform is being examined. Doctors continue to look at ways that they can provide qualified care to the increasing number of people who are in search of these services. At a time when the dismantling of the Affordable Care Act could strip that coverage from many millions of Americans who finally had a way to take care of themselves, these same medical professionals continue to struggle with platforms that can provide the most affordable care to even the least fortunate in our society.
Without health care coverage, sadly, many people turn to the most expensive option. Rather than going to a doctor, these people often end up treating their conditions in expensive hospital emergency rooms. The fact that many of these health conditions do not even merit an ER visit. In fact, nearly 48% of all adult ER patients who were not sick enough to be admitted to the hospital sought treatment at the ER because their physicians? offices were closed, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). If these patients would have sought the services offered in an urgent care setting the costs for care would have been less expensive, but still excellent.
One way that urgent care settings across the country are trying to draw more people into urgent care settings is by posting their affordable rates online, in the lobbies of their waiting rooms, and, sometimes, on local billboards. Knowing, for instance, from a billboard sign that the wait time at a local urgent care is less than 10 minutes and that a strep throat test in only $25 helps patients make more informed decisions.
Fortunately, 60% of all urgent care centers have a wait time of less than 15 minutes to see a physician or mid-level provider. Even more fortunate is the fact that as many as 65% of these clinics have a physician onsite at all times. Make the right medical decision!