There are any number of medical problems that can occur during the course of any given day. Accidents happen all around us all of the time. Children fall and hurt themselves, grandparents become ill, and people of every age come down with a sickness that needs immediate attention.
For many years, the emergency room was the only place you could go if you needed to see a doctor immediately. If your illness came upon you during your doctor’s off hours, what else was there to do but go to the ER? Now, medical urgent care is breaking new ground when it comes to emergency medical care. Not every urgent medical situation needs emergency care. Most simply need urgent medical care.
One of the many advantages of medical urgent care is the lack of wait time when compared to the emergency room of a regular hospital. Emergency rooms are notorious for their long wait times. One of the reasons they have such long wait times is that they prioritize cases. If someone comes in with a more severe injury, they take that person first, as well they should. But at an urgent care center, those severe trauma cases are not seen there. they right go to the ER.
Most of the urgent care centers around the country have an average wait time of 15 minutes or less. In addition, about 65% of these care centers have a doctor on staff at all times. Coming into an urgent care clinic does not mean that you are sacrificing quality for a speedier treatment. When you seek medical urgent care, you can rest assured that you are finding quality care on every level.
Urgent care clinics are also open late. The idea of these clinics is to give you the option to come in and see your regular doctor as often as you need to. On the weeknights, you’ll find the majority of urgent care facilities are open until at least 7:00pm with many open until 9:00pm. These extended hours make urgent care much more accessible and appealing to most patients.
When it comes to medical urgent care, it’s the physicians themselves that are moving medicine in this direction. Doctors, or a group of doctors, own at least half of the urgent care facilities around the country. They are leading this revolution in medical treatment. The doctors themselves are moving medicine in the direction it once moved in–a close, personal relationship between doctor and patient.
When you have a medical situation that might not be an emergency but needs attention, wouldn’t you prefer to see a doctor that knows your situation and condition? No one wants to be probed by a stranger when someone familiar could walk you through your medical worries with care and tenderness. Medical urgent care is the wave of the future, and happily for us all, the future is now.
