It is a fact of life that Americans, young or old, will sometimes suffer illness or injury in their lives, and any responsible adult will know how to get themselves or another victim to the proper facility for medical care right away, and often, this can save a life. An urgent care clinic, for example, may be found after someone uses an Internet search on a smart phone or a PC, and search queries such as “urgent care clinic Burlington VT” or “clinic care near me Los Angeles CA” can yield results. The person can find the name, address, and hours of operation for nearby clinics, and take either themselves or another victim there for care for everyday scrapes and bruises. More serious, life-threatening problems, meanwhile, require more than an urgent care clinic. Emergency care at a hospital will be needed, and an emergency room doctor can help get the patient stabilized.

Emergency Care

What is emergency care? Most often, this describes a hospital and its ER, where trained doctors and physicians will immediately help any victim with serious, life-threatening problems. It should be noted that in some areas, an urgent care clinic may in fact double as an emergency care clinic as well, but someone looking for emergency care should be certain that wherever they go, proper emergency care can be offered. An ordinary urgent care clinic cannot handle life-threatening issues.

What calls for emergency care? Broken arms or legs, bullet wounds or stab wounds, head injuries, eye injuries, or serious chest pain or difficulty breathing can all threaten a life, and they all call for emergency care at a hospital or a hybrid urgent/emergency clinic. Doctors and physicians there will have the medicine, tools, and training to stabilize a patient and help them recover. Not every victim needs this level of care, however; in fact, over half of emergency care episodes could have been handled at an urgent care clinic instead, so victims of more minor, everyday problems are advised to find the correct type of clinic for their health issues. An urgent care clinic may never be far away.

An Urgent Care Clinics

To put it simply, urgent care clinics are extremely convenient for those who need them. Such clinics number in the thousands, and can be found in nearly any town or city in the United States today. They are staffed by nurse practitioners and physicians who have the medicine and the training to help address everyday illness or wounds, and they may have broad hours of operations. They are efficient, too; a clinic can, if it is running smoothly, see about three patients per hour, and a patient may expect a wait time of about 15 minutes. These clinics often accept many healthcare insurance policies, but patients who visit one should check for this.

Four out of five urgent care clinics can take care of bone fractures, and a person can have their sprained ankle or wrist taken care of, too. Given how nearly 25,000 Americans suffer sprained ankles per day, such as form playing sports, urgent care clinics are essential. Such clinics can also offer medicine to provide relief against colds and the flu, and they can also provide stitches and other treatment for shallower cuts, such as if a person stepped on broken glass or misused a knife. Many people visit urgent care clinics for upper respiratory issues as well, and a person may visit an urgent care clinic to get medicine and relief for a rash or an allergy. Many clinics also have a pharmacy built into them, and pharmacists there can refill drug prescriptions for visitors.

Many clinics are independent, while others are what is called retail clinics. That is, they are built into large retailers such as Target, Walgreens, and Wal-Mart, and they can be easy to find and get parking for due to the popularity of the retailers. These clinics may offer any number of services, which often includes a pharmacy. Most likely, such a pharmacy will have similar hours of operation as the retailer itself, but interested guests may contact the store to find out the pharmacy’s exact hours, just to be sure. This can be convenient for those living in urban or suburb areas.