Urgent care is a significant industry in this country, and many more urgent care centers are opening up. They are often separate from emergency care, which is attached to a hospital, and an urgent care clinic is set up to handle slightly different medical situations. They should have a medical walk-in clinic, and handle injuries or illnesses that need timely attention, such as cuts, sprains, flu, and severe pain. Emergency room care is meant to provide medical help for more serious, potentially life-threatening situations such as major injuries, heart attacks, and very serious illness.

Urgent care centers are not necessarily open 24 hours like emergency rooms, but most of them are open seven days per week, and treat an estimated 3 million people in that time. 20,000 doctors in the U.S. are involved with urgent care medicine, which means they need to have a wide expertise in diagnosing many illnesses and treating injuries. Not all urgent care centers provide care for broken bones, although typically four out of five of them do. A more common complaint is a sprain, which an estimated 25,000 people in the U.S. suffer from every day.

One very common symptom that, when acute, can require urgent care, is lower back pain. An urgent care walk in clinic can provide pain medication for severe back pain, but you will most likely be advised to use physical therapy equipment, and to visit a physical therapy specialist.

Lower back pain affects that daily lives of 69% of Americans, although 40% of them do not see a physical therapist or even a doctor. Managing chronic pain can be extremely difficult and since back pain is so common, it is often not properly managed. People may think it is more expensive to use physical therapy equipment, but in fact patients that receive physical therapy early on in their experience of back pain save $2736.23 on total medical costs. Using physical therapy equipment may be the best way to relieve back pain, but it can also be managed with regular physical exercise, stress reduction and a change in work environment, in case that is part of the cause. Regardless, managing chronic pain is not something you should have to do on your own.