Medical help can be hard to come by when your regular doctor’s office is closed. After all, many people will avoid going to the emergency room simply because an ER visit can end up costing a great deal of money – more than $1,000 per visit has now become the average. In addition to this, wait times at just about any emergency room can be extensive.

Fortunately, urgent care services have become more and more prominent since the year of 2000, during which the first urgent care location opened its doors. And the majority of all urgent care centers – up to 85% of them, as a matter of fact – are open each and every day of the week. To further add to the benefits of going to an urgent care clinic, it has also been found that more than 90% of all walk in urgent care centers boast average waiting times of no more than a mere 30 minutes – about half of the time you would expect to be waiting in a hospital emergency room.

And multicare urgent care centers are ideal for any minor medical issue that you might come across. For instance, many cases of the common cold are seen in any given walk in clinic. After all, there are up to one billion cases of the common cold in general seen throughout the country – and some of these cases can mimic other illnesses, like the flu. It’s often better to be safe than sorry, and getting checked out for a cold is common and something that many urgent care doctors have a great deal of experience in. Fortunately, the majority of all colds will be very mild, with the average person recovering fully in only just 10 days – and sometimes in as little as 48 hours (though in no longer than two weeks).

Various infections can also be treated in urgent care locations and walk-in clinics. Consider, for instance, a urinary tract infection. Urinary tract infections are immensely common, particularly among sexually active women. In fact, they are so commonplace that at least eight million of them will be diagnosed on a yearly basis. In some cases, diagnoses will occur more than once per year for the same woman. If a woman is aware of the symptoms she is having and what they likely mean, seeking out urgent care treatment and getting a round of antibiotics will be more than sufficient care. Respiratory infections are even more common, so much so that they were the most treated illness for urgent care centers back in the year of 2012.

In that same year of 2012, wound repair was the most common procedure that was done, from the urgent care near me to the urgent care in Puyallup WA. Various other types of injuries can also be helped in walk in clinics and urgent care centers. For instance, the sprained ankle is commonly seen throughout urgent care locations, as there are up to 25,000 sprained ankle cases taking place per day. In addition to this fact, it has also been found that more than 80% of all urgent care centers also have the capability to treat fractures. This minor fracture treatment allows patients to yet again avoid the emergency room, something that will benefit them greatly at the end of the day for many of the reasons that have been discussed above.

And there is no doubt about it that urgent care centers are growing more and more popular with each passing year. Already, more than three million people are seeking the services of an urgent care location over the course of any given week. This means that very nearly one quarter of all people have gone to at least one urgent care center or medical clinic over the course of the last two years, a percentage that will likely grow with the passage of time. And many people – most people, as a matter of fact – are very happy with the care that they have been able to receive at just about any given urgent care center. All in all, urgent care centers provide a more and more viable alternative for medical care and are not to be discounted.