Where Do You Go If Your Doctor’s Office Is Close?

When you need medical attention quickly, where are you going to go? To an emergency room? To your primary physician? Emergency rooms have incredibly long waits, and wind up costing you hundreds of dollars. And as for your primary physician, less than a third (29 percent) of primary care doctors that practice in the United States offer after hours coverage, so unless you’re injured or sickened during the work day, good luck.

Thankfully, there are convenient care facilities to take care of you for times like these. Convenient care facilities are open later and on weekends, and address medical urgencies that are not necessarily emergencies. Some of the the conditions that are most often treated by convenient care centers include sprains and strains; fractures; upper respiratory illnesses; gastrointestinal conditions such as food poisoning; lacerations; and concussions.

Did you know that according to a survey by the Urgent Care Association of America, more than half of patients (57 percent) had to wait 15 minutes or less to be seen, and about 80 percent of all visits are 60 minutes or less.

These facilities are highly regulated and trained. In the spring of 2009, the Urgent care Association of America established the Certified Urgent Care Center designation for urgent care facilities, and just three years earlier in 2006 there was the first fellowship training program in urgent care medicine, which was sponsored by the Urgent care Association of America.

The next time you or someone you know needs medical attention, consider a medical urgent care facility. There are tons of urgent care locations all around you that are available to offer affordable, convenient care! If you have any questions about these convenient care centers, feel free to ask in the comments! For more about this, go here.