While many know of urgent care due to their recent growth rate, there are numerous things that the average person doesn’t know about the centers. They are able to provide more care than most people know, with longer hours available and less wait time than many other medical care options. Read on for a few things you may not know about these great facilities.
- About 60% of urgent care facilities have wait times of 15 minutes or less, and 65% have a physician on-site at all-times.
- A survey done by The Urgent Care Association of America proved the small wait times, and also showed that 80% of all visits last 60 minutes or less.
- About 66% of urgent care facilities open before 9:00 am on weekdays, with 45.7% opening at the same time on Saturdays and 31.1% at the same time on Sundays.
- About 90.6% of urgent care centers stay open until 7:00 pm on weeknights, while two out of five are open until 9:00 pm or later.
- One in every five urgent cares see over 450 patients per week.
- About 70% of centers are able to provide intravenous fluids if needed.
- Around half of ER patients only seek medical care at an ER because their primary physicians’ office was closed, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
- Four out of five, or 80%, of centers are able to provide fracture care to their patients.
- Physicians, or groups of physicians, own about half of all urgent care centers.
- About 40% of urgent cares now use electronic prescription ordering systems, in addition to many using computerized systems for viewing lab and imaging results, collecting patient demographics, billing, condition and procedure coding, and notes.