Many medical facilities can be found across the United States today, and the medical care industry is enormous, spanning many different providers. A common type of medical care is visiting an urgent care centers, and the medical professionals at these urgent care centers can treat a wide variety of ailments and wounds. When a victim suffers from non life-threatening wounds or illnesses, they may see the doctors or other medical professionals at healthcare clinics near them. A nearby responsible adult may look for these urgent care centers online with a mobile device or a PC, and enter a search query for their home town or ZIP code to find medical professionals in the area. Such a search may show some nearby medical professionals whose clinic are currently open, and also show the name, address, and hours of operation for those clinics. The victim may then be taken to see those medical professionals right away and get treatment. What is there to know about modern healthcare clinics and the medical professionals who work at them?

Urgent Care Centers Today

These facilities should not be confused with emergency rooms, which provide immediate care for life-threatening conditions. Rather, urgent care centers are visited when a patient needs medical attention for more everyday, lesser wounds or illnesses, but that does not make these urgent care centers any less important than emergency rooms are. In fact, many thousands of these urgent care centers can be found across the United States today, and such clinics have been around since he 1990s and even earlier. Most of these clinics tend to be small and independent, although they may sometimes form small local networks with one another if need be. Most towns and cities will have at least a few such clinics in them, and some rural communities may have one in their area. Every year, meanwhile, construction crews are hard at work building new urgent care centers in rural areas that do not yet have one, giving even more Americans access to these important medical centers.

Many of these urgent care centers are built into strip malls or may be a standalone building, and this is common across North America. In other cases, though, these urgent care centers may be built into a larger facility such as a retailer or a hospital. In the former case, a retail clinic is found inside a larger retailer such as Target, Walmart, or Walgreens, or similar large brand names. These large retailers are easy to find and have ample parking for their shoppers, which may be convenient for clinic guests. Many shoppers may take this opportunity to pick up prescription drug refills while they do their shopping, as many retail clinics have a pharmacy in them with medical professionals on hand.

Meanwhile, some medical clinics are built into hospitals, but it should be noted that these urgent care clinics operate as a separate entity. The medical professionals and care provided by the clinic are distinct from those of the hospital at large, meaning that a patient there may visit the clinic and leave again without interacting with the hospital itself. This may be highly convenient for some hospital guests who have medical conditions that don’t call for the emergency rooms.

Urgent care care clinics often accept various health insurance policies, and are often faster and cheaper to visit than the ER. If a clinic is running smoothly, the staff there may see three patients per hour, and a patient may expect a wait time of around 15 minutes.

Treatments

A patient at these urgent care clinics may visit the pharmacy for prescription drug refills, and they may also visit these clinics for medicinal relief against the common cold or flu or similar infections. Upper respiratory infections are among the most common reasons to visit these clinics. Patients may also get lotion and ointment for skin rashes, such as from poison ivy. Physical trauma may also be treated; shallow cuts can be treated with stitches and bandages, and four out of five urgent care clinics can provide treatments for bone fractures. What is more, ankle and wrist sprains may also be taken care of at these clinics, as these are common but not life-threatening problems a patient may have.