Urgent care clinics have provided a method for getting fast and efficient medical care since the year of 2000, when the first ever urgent care location opened for business. In the years that have transpired since, the number of urgent care locations has skyrocketed. As of data collected in the year of 2016, there were already well over 7,000 urgent care centers found from coast to coast. And in the years that have passed even since that date, it is only likely that more have come into being. After all, up to 20,000 different doctors are now employed at such urgent care walk in clinics, servicing as many as three million people throughout the course of just one single week.
But why have urgent care centers and walk in clinics become so important, so necessary, throughout the course of our day to day lives? The answer is a multi faceted one. For one thing, the services that urgent care locations provide are more easily accessible than even the services provided by your local doctor’s office. This is due to the fact that urgent care centers are simply open more frequently, with up to 85% of them open each and every day of the week, including on many holidays that would close a normal doctor’s office. Because of this, care can be more readily sought out, providing an alternative to going to the emergency room (which can be immensely costly both in terms of time and money).
The level of care provided in the average walk in urgent care center is also high, with the average medical clinic able to handle a wider array of medical concerns than many might think. For instance, various illnesses can be handled in just about any walk-in medical clinic setting. This is certainly a good thing, a necessary thing, as up to one billion colds will occur throughout the United States in just one year. In addition to this, up to one fifth of the population is likely to come down with the flu in this same span of time. Therefore, having skilled doctors on staff to look at and assess various illnesses is hugely important, as this will dictate how they are treated and even how their spread is mitigated.
Consider, for instance, the flu shot. Though the flu shot is never 100%, getting one can seriously lower your chances of catching the flu yourself or of passing it to someone else, two factors that are critical to slow the spread of the flu through society during each and every flu season. In fact, the data that has been gathered on this subject more than supports this claim, as it shows that just during the 2018 to 2019 flu season alone, the flu shot reduced the transmission of the flu by as much as 46% in adults alone – and by more than 60% in children. This no doubt saved many lives, as even so there were still up to 20 million visits to walk in urgent care centers and other medical clinics related to the flu and the flu alone. Fortunately, walk-in clinics not only provide anti viral treatment and medical assessment for the flu itself, but also preventative flu shots, starting at the very beginning of flu and cold season, in September. For many people, getting a flu shot at an urgent care center has been the most beneficial form of urgent care treatment that they have ever received.
Of course, various other issues can also be treated in your typical urgent care location or walk-in medical care clinic. Ankle sprains provide a great example, as there are as many as 25,000 of them in a single day (with up to 80% caused just by a simple inversion – or inward rolling – of the ankle). And up to 80% of all urgent care clinics can even provide care for fractures, provided that they are not too serious. Therefore, you can go to an urgent care clinic for just about anything, to say the very least. For many people, urgent care is very much the answer.