If you’re looking for comprehensive and thorough medical treatment, consider your local urgent care center. With more than 7,000 urgent care locations now open for business all throughout the United States, urgent care locations are now more popular and readily available than ever before. In fact, the around 20,000 some doctors employees at urgent care clinics throughout the country now serve as many as three million people over the course of just one single week alone. And there is no doubting the fact that both of these numbers are likely to grow in the years that are to come.
But what exactly should you go to an urgent care center for? Typically, these walk in clinics are able to treat a wide variety of different injuries. Ankle sprains are commonly seen in the typical walk in clinic, something that is certainly not surprising considering the fact that up to 25,000 ankle sprains will happen over the course of just one single day – and that’s just within the United States alone. In addition to this, the vast majority of urgent care clinics – around 80% of them, to be just a bit more exact – are now able to both diagnose and treat fractures as well.
Of course, your typical walk in urgent care clinic will also be able to provide treatment for illnesses as well. In fact, an urgent care doctor will see many cases of the common cold, as there are at least one billion developed over the course of a single year in the United States alone. Colds are particularly common among children, who will develop as many as ten colds over the course of such a span of time. In children, colds can easily lead to problems like ear infections, which often must be treated with a round of antibiotics before they dissipate.
And urinary tract infections too can be easily treated and eradicated through the use of antibiotics. With more than eight million of them seen by various doctors over the course of the year, the UTI is an easy condition to treat at just about any given urgent care location. Skin infections and other types of infections can also often be seen in such settings.
Of course, various skin conditions can also be assessed for severity and provided relieving treatments. Sunburn is one such condition, becoming particularly commonplace during the warm summer months, when more people spend longer periods of time outside. In fact, sunburn can develop after only just 15 minutes of sun exposure, and can become much more serious than many people realize. An urgent care doctor at your local walk in urgent care center will be able to assess the severity of your sunburn as well as advise you how to best care for it = and how to prevent future sunburns as well, something that is also quite hugely important.
For many people, poison ivy can also cause a reaction that is in need of a looking over by an urgent care professional. This type of urgent care treatment is quite common, as the vast majority of people – up to 85% of them, as a matter of fact – will have an adverse reaction to poison ivy, though some people will certainly have a much more serious reaction than others. As this plant can be found in all of the continental United States, it is certainly not unknown in many walk in urgent care centers all throughout the country.
But why is the typical urgent care center such a viable option for medical treatment? For one thing, it’s highly available and accessible to just about everyone, as up to 85% of all urgent care locations and other such walk-in clinics are open each and every day of the week. The wait times at the typical urgent care center are also quite low, with more than half of all urgent care locations boasting average wait times of no more than 15 minutes. And more than 90% of such clinics have average wait times that do not exceed 30 minutes at the very most.