There are many benefits to visiting a local urgent care center. After all, more than three million people are visiting them on a weekly basis, showing just how popular they have become. For many people, the urgent care services that can be found at such an urgent care clinic are vastly improved from the alternatives to a typical doctor’s office that used to exist. With the advent of urgent care, no longer is it necessary to go to the hospital for even minor medical issues.
After all, urgent care locations are open each and every day of the week – at least in the case of 85% of all urgent care clinics. This allows people to seek medical care even when their own GP has closed his or her doors for the weekend. For many people, going into an urgent care center is convenient as well, as wait times associated with a walk in urgent care center are quite low. In more than half of all urgent care centers, in fact, the average wait time is no greater than a mere 15 minutes. And in the case of more than 90% of all urgent care centers, this period of time will be no more than a half of an hour at the very most. Going to an emergency room, however, garners you a much longer wait time of an hour or more.
In addition to this, going to an urgent care center or other such walk in clinic is going to be much less expensive than going to a local emergency room. Emergency room visits are incredibly expensive, as far too many people have first hand knowledge surrounding. As a matter of fact, you’ll end up paying, on average, more than $1,000 for even the treatment of a relatively minor issue. And while the services provided by walk in urgent care centers are certainly not free, they are much more reasonable for the average working adult. And with so much of our medical field accruing sky high costs, this is certainly a blessing for a great many people out there, people who are likely to need some kind of medical care at some point in time or another.
Urgent care centers and other such walk-in clinics are also usually able to provide preventative care measures, things you can do to KEEP you from getting and spending a lot of money on medical care in the first place. The yearly flu shot is one great example of exactly this. After all, your risk for getting the flu if you do not have the flu shot can be quite high (though exactly how high will vary from year to year, of course). In fact, up to one fifth of the population can contract the flu during a particularly bad season for it. Even in the best case scenario, it is likely that around 5% of the population will still come down with the flu.
Fortunately, most urgent care centers, if not all of them, will offer the flu shot. And while the flu shot can never fully prevent the contraction of the flu, there are still many reasons to get it. For one thing, it DOES cut down dramatically on the transmission of the flu. For while there were still around 20 million cases of the flu during the last flu season, the flu shot cut this down by more than 45% among adults alone, and by nearly two thirds among the population of children living in this country. And that’s not all that the flu shot can do for you.
Even if you still end up getting the flu, the flu shot benefits you. The flu shot helps to reduce the likelihood that you would ever experience serious complications as a result of getting the flu. These complications, such as pneumonia, can land people in the hospital – and can even, in the most severe cases, lead to death. The flu is a serious illness, and is not one to be taken lightly. At the end of the day, getting the flu shot from a local urgent care clinic will be more than worth it, to say the very least on the subject matter.