Seeking out medical care is something that becomes a necessity for all of us at some point in our lives. For big problems to smaller maladies, seeing a doctor for prompt treatment is all a part of staying healthy. But for many people, scheduling an appointment with a general care practitioner can be hugely problematic. Some people, for instance, do not have medical insurance, making a general care practitioner often difficult to afford. And sometimes even people with healthcare aren’t able to find time to get in to see their general care practitioner due to work schedules and other commitments in their busy lives. For many people, emergency services like the emergency room become the only option for prompt medical treatment for medical problems both large and small.

But seeking out such emergency services is not always the ideal solution. First of all, it almost always contributes to congestion in the emergency room, making it more difficult for everyone there to seek out emergency services as quickly and thoroughly as possible. Many emergency rooms have incredibly long wait times as well – it is likely that you will wait up to an hour before you even see a nurse, let alone get the emergency services and treatments as well. Emergency rooms are also much more likely to cost an exhorbitant amount of money for even non emergency services and treatment for minor medical conditions. The average emergency room bill can easily cost more than one thousand dollars.

Fortunately, urgent care centers all throughout the United States have been able to fill the need for prompt, affordable medical care. Your nearby urgent care center is likely to have a wait time of only around fifteen minutes – with a total average time in the clinic of no more than one hour – and is often considerably less expensive, an average visit costing about two hundred dollars even for those who are without medical insurance for themselves or their children (as urgent care centers can treat children as well). In fact, the vast majority of cases seen in the emergency room – as much as sixty five percent – were found to have been minor enough to have been adequately and competently treated in an urgent care center setting. Urgent care centers have become so popular and trusted that around three million people visit and urgent care location in the United States in one week alone.

And the majority of urgent care centers are able to treat medical conditions both minor as well as major. For instance, fracture care is possible at around eighty percent of all urgent care centers, as they have the capabilities to both diagnose and treat a fracture in most parts of the body. But urgent care centers are also ideal for treating minor illnesses as well, such as providing palliative care for the common cold, of which there are at least one billion cases in just one year alone across the United States. Children are even more predisposed to such illnesses, with a normal healthy child getting as many as ten colds in one year, and could benefit from the pediatric urgent care services that are provided at the majority of urgent care centers.

Seeking out medical treatment can be fraught with complications for many people throughout the United States, such as those without medical insurance as well as people who have such busy schedules that scheduling a doctor’s appointment with a general care practitioner becomes an impossibility. Fortunately, urgent care fills the need for necessary and effective medical care, with wait times that are typically no more than fifteen minutes and medical centers that are open far earlier in the morning and far later in the evening than traditional doctor’s offices. For those without access to medical care, urgent care centers provide an alternative to the emergency services that are offered in the typical emergency room, both at a lower cost and in a more efficient manner.