You are currently sitting in the emergency room at the local hospital waiting for an x-ray. Yesterday, only about an hour into your class’s Outdoor Education experience you felt something snap in the back of you right knee as you were walking from your cabin. You cannot put weight on my leg because of the pain so you borrowed the camp’s crutches for the week. The doctor thinks it is the same type of over-use muscle injury you had in the other leg last year, but the x-ray will rule out meniscus damage. Ice, pain reliever, and staying off it as much as possible seems to the only thing to be done for now. Outdoor Education on crutches is less than ideal, but your students are having fun and you are determined to be there for them. It is frustrating to think, however, that you are the only one you know who can get hurt just by walking!
In addition to the frustration about the injury, you are frustrated for the amount of time and money that the required x-ray cost. If you were at home and more families with the health care options, of course, you would have simply gone in to the local walk in health clinic. In the middle of the wilderness though the options are very limited and both your school and the camp required that you see a local physician because the injury happened on the camp property and while you were at a school event.
Spoiled by the location of the local urgent care clinics, you are used to getting the health care that you need in a short amount of time and for a far more affordable price.
From Flu Symptoms to Fracture Care Walk In Clinics Are an Affordable and Convenient Option
Today’s health care options seem to be both confusing and complex, so it should come as no surprise that more and more Americans are turing to local quick care clinics to get the help that they need when it comes to minor illnesses and injuries. The fact that as many as 80% of urgent care settings now provide fracture care is one of the reasons that many families choose this option. In the past, when patients might have first visited their family pediatrician or physician to get an initial opinion and then went to the hospital for an x-ray, the process was both time consuming and expensive. Today, however, many families take advantage of the more than 85% of urgent care centers that are open seven days a week to get the medical attention that they need.