It’s late, and you toddler is awake with a fever and what you suspect is an ear infection, and her crying is keeping the entire household up. You don’t really want to take her to the emergency room because you know you’ll have to sit there for hours before you will be seen. Not a fun prospect late in the evening with a crying toddler! you could easily be there until the wee hours of the morning. Not only that, but the emergency room is simply far too expensive for a situation that you know isn’t life or death. Your child is in pain, and should probably be seen by a doctor, and the rest of the household would like to get some sleep, but you can’t justify the exorbitant expense of taking her to the emergency room. Your regular clinic is closed so what can you as a parent do?
Urgent care centers are efficient, competent, and easy to find. More than half of urgent care locations have a waiting time of less than fifteen minutes. This time is reduced even further if the patient is a child. or if the patient comes in with chest pain, the wait time is eliminated and he or she is seen immediately. Nearly three quarters of urgent care locations have an in-house physician at all times. Urgent care centers provide needed medical care after hours when the patient’s regular clinic is closed. Most urgent care locations are open prior to 9am, and stay open at least until 7pm, many until 9pm or later, with the more advanced urgent care centers also opening on Saturdays and Sundays.
The majority of urgent cases involve the treatment of sinus infections, ear infections, testing for strep throat, and provide x-rays, and four out of five local urgent care centers have the facility to treat a fracture or similar injury. Though they need prompt treatment, none of these cases are life threatening, so the wait time at an emergency room could be hours. According to a recent survey by The Urgent Care Association of America, 57% of patients were seen at urgent care locations within 15 minutes of arrival, and the majority of patients were seen, treated, and discharged within 60 minutes.
Of course you would like to see your own doctor, but in this case you decide that your child cannot wait to be seen when the clinic opens in the morning, so you grab your phone and look up “urgent care locations,” and “urgent care for kids,” and lo, and behold! You find one ten minutes away. So you hop in the car with your unhappy child, find easy parking at the medical facility, and go in. Once inside, the care you receive is stellar. The doctor is not just “on call,” but present at the facility, and you are rapidly ushered into the examining room. After a quick but thorough examination, confirming what you already knew: that your child has an ear infection, you are issued a prescription for an antibiotic and given compassionate advice regarding managing her pain. You were in and out within thirty minutes, including your wait time. Driving home with your child now asleep in her car seat, you reflect on your visit. Of course you will follow up with your own pediatrician, but your visit to this urgent care location was quick, relatively inexpensive, and the medical staff were all very compassionate and well trained. The in-house physician was highly competent, and was able to quickly diagnose the issue. You arrive home, put your daughter to bed, and retire yourself, confident that she received the correct treatment in a timely and affordable fashion.