It’s always frightening when a person’s health is at risk in any way, shape or form — but that fright is taken to another level entirely when that person is a child. We never want to risk our kids’ health, but at the same time rushing your child to the emergency room every time they have a persistent cough or sprain their ankle is neither time nor cost effective. Yet parents should also be able to take their kids to the doctor whenever they feel they need to. Many parents feel the financial strain of visiting the doctor — and they shouldn’t have to compromise their child’s welfare because of it. Luckily, urgent care centers now offer the medical help parents and children need, while at the same time lowering costs and wait times. Urgent care for kids is a great way for parents to not only have their children’s relatively minor injuries and illnesses treated, while also getting the typical medical care that kids always need. Urgent care for kids can be intimidating at first; but children will find themselves in a friendly and professional environment, being treated by people who put them first. Of course, naturally kids have very different medical needs than those of adults. Below, we’ll look at some of the medical treatments and services that can be offered to children by urgent care centers.
1. Vaccines
Children need vaccines — while they’ve become something of a hot topic in recent years, the vast majority of the medical community agrees on this. For that matter, in many schools vaccines are not an option, but a necessity. Children typically cannot attend public school — and many private schools — without the vaccines necessary to protect them and their classmates from a variety of diseases. Vaccines have virtually eradicated in America diseases like chicken pox, measles, smallpox and polio — but at the same time, they can become quite pricy. In some cases, parents are perfectly capable of affording certain vaccines, but still don’t want to go to the doctor’s office and wait for hours for their children to get the vaccines necessary. They still will — but it’s rather tedious. Urgent care centers offer cheap vaccines without the long wait time. They’re exactly the same vaccines that children would receive at the doctor’s office, but given in a way that is less expensive and more efficient. What’s not to like?
2. Diagnosing And Treating Illnesses
It can be quite scary when your child is running a fever — but at the same time, you can’t rush them to the emergency room every time this happens. Doctor’s offices aren’t always open when you need them to be, which often leaves parents up late and worrying about their children’s health. Urgent care for kids is the perfect solution to this issue, as it’s often more available than treatment from a regular doctor’s office, and less expensive than emergency room care. Children can have their illnesses diagnosed and treated quickly and effectively. Urgent care for kids can mean something as simple as having a prescription for antibiotics given — or as in-depth as having a child’s heart and lungs checked for issues. In the case of a life-threatening emergency, a child would be referred to a major hospital or emergency room; but in most cases, urgent care clinics can treat children quickly and effectively without any referral.
3. Fracture And Sprain Care
Children tend to play around and get themselves hurt — so it’s a good thing that four out of five urgent care clinics offer fracture care. Sprains can also be an issue with children, as they’re a part of the 25,000 Americans a day that suffer from ankle sprains; and these too, can be treated at urgent care clinics. While a fracture could need more intense care down the line, 80% of ankle sprains are simple “inversions” of the ankle and can be treated right there at the urgent care center.