Not too long ago, especially in rural areas, regular doctors held regular hours in their regular offices. If a medical emergency happened, a patient traveled to the nearest hospital and was admitted for treatment in the emergency room there. After being released, the patient went home and followed up with their regular doctor during regular office hours. These days, that model of treatment is going away and being replaced by family urgent care facilities.
Currently, there are over 20,000 doctors who are practicing urgent care medicine and the number is growing. One of the reasons is that doctors are able to take more control over their practices. Roughly half of family urgent care facilities are owned by doctors on their own or with a group of physicians. When this is the case, the doctors are much more able to be involved and aware of all aspects of their business, not just their medical practice.
Patients benefit from this in much the same way they do when they patronize a small business owned by the operator. The commitment to customers, which in this case are medical patients, is always far greater if you own the store instead of simply working there.
Family urgent care facilities can be much more beneficial for patients than the traditional way of being treated. For one thing, the hours for an urgent care clinic are extended when compared to c regular doctor’s office. Many of them are open extended hours, seven days a week. Some even offer 24 clinic hours with a doctor always on staff, and often the emergency care you can receive means that you wouldn’t even need to go to the emergency room.
Going to an emergency room when you could just as easily have gone to an urgent care facility could not only save you a long wait and a big hassle but also a significant amount of money. Treatment that could be handled by a family urgent care facility will typically run you around and average of $226. The same treatment handled at the hospital emergency room could cost up to $2,039. It doesn’t take an expert in economics to see that urgent care facilities are worth looking into when it comes to injuries and illness that don’t need the expertise and equipment of an emergency room.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of 60% of all urgent care facilities have an average wait time of fewer than 15 minutes to see a physician or a mid-level provider such as a nurse practitioner. Also, 65% of all urgent care facilities have at least one physician on site at all times.
In today’s world, the practice of medicine is changing in many ways. When and where we can see a doctor is changing right along with the advances in technology and other aspects of the medical world. Find a quality family urgent care facility near you and give it a try.