Urgent Care When you Do Not actually Need the Emergency Room

Do you know why emergency rooms are always so packed? Why the lines never seem to move and the wait is always around three hours? It is because no one ever goes to an immediate medical care facility. In fact, most people have no idea where the closest urgent care is. Or the fact that a lot of urgent care hours are 24, 7, 365. When you cannot get in to your walk in doctor, immediate care should be your next stop.

People are constantly flooding emergency rooms for the most inconsequential of ailments. A good rule of thumb is whether someone is going to lose their life or a limb. If neither of those things are going to happen, you can go take advantage of urgent care hours and hit up a 24 hour urgent care instead. That includes fractures, like the commonly fractured wrist for those under 75, and the tragically commonly fractured hip for those over 75.

More common, emergency room clogging ailments are gastrointestinal conditions such as food poisoning, ear aches, migraines, strep throat, broken bones, and the common cold. They do not call it common for no reason. The average child catches anywhere between six and ten colds each year. And for the average American, five to 20 percent of the population will be plagued with the flu each year.

And at this point in the game, you cannot plead ignorance to urgent care hours, or even the existence of the facility itself. Urgent care clinics have been popping up all over the country since the 70s. And they employ over 129,000 people in the United States. With their convenient urgent care hours and their point of care pharmacies, urgent care is far more user friendly than an emergency room or standard doctor office. The point of care pharmacy is a prescription dispensing location, perfectly located in the urgent care facility itself. This means that a patient with a prescription does not need to drive anywhere else or wait for a pharmacy to open in order to fill their prescription of horse tranquilizers.

Urgent care facilities should be just as packed, if not more, as any emergency room in the country. Their costs are just a fraction of those incurred through emergency rooms, have fully trained doctors, and drugs on site. It is a one stop, convenient location for your medical needs. Next time you are thinking about a rush to the emergency room, just remember: Life or limb? And then set your gps for the closest urgent care. Get more info here. Find out more about this topic here. More like this blog.