From broken arms to high temperatures, the best urgent care is often a better option than a visit to a crowded and overly scheduled family physician or an expensive trip to a hospital emergency room. Whether you are at home or on vacation, a visit to a walk-in urgent care often provides affordable prices, convenient hours, and qualified physicians.
Pediatric urgent care clinics are often the fastest solution for dealing with the itchy eyes that are associated with pink eye, as well as wounds from the latest bike accident. Adults can also find the medical care that they need in a conveniently located urgent care clinic.
The Best Urgent Care Charges Affordable Prices
Although night time health concerns may not wait until morning, they do not always merit an expensive trip to a hospital emergency room. In fact, a report from Truven Health Analytics indicates that more than 70% of emergency department visits from patients with consumer-sponsored insurance coverage are for non-emergency conditions. These conditions could easily and effectively be treated through simple outpatient care that is provided at a walk-in clinic.
As more and more Americans find themselves with health insurance coverage, the medical industry is hopeful that patients will get in the habit of visiting more affordable walk-in clinics rather than incurring expensive hospital emergency room bills. Some of the latest statistics indicate that while the average reimbursement for an urgent care visit is approximately $103 a patient, a hospital emergency department visit averages a significantly higher $302 for the average patient.
The Best Urgent Care Provides Convenient Hours
Nearly all urgent care centers in the year 2014 are open seven days a week. In fact, 97% of these clinics in the year 2014 were open every day of the week. Additionally, 99% of the 2014 clinics were open for at least four hours. Instead of waiting weeks to get an appointment at a family pediatrician or physician office, these urgent care centers provide the convenience of walk in appointments. Some go so far as to having large billboards on the closest interstate to indicate exactly how long the wait for an appointment is.
Although well baby visits can often be scheduled many weeks in advance, many other medical needs that a family faces cannot be scheduled ahead of time. A sudden temperature at 2:00 am, for instance, often merits an immediate trip to a walk-in clinic rather than waiting for a phone call in the morning, only to find out that you cannot get into see the family pediatrician until later in the afternoon.
A much more timely approach, research indicates that nearly 60% of all urgent care centers have a wait time of less than 15 minutes to see a physician or mid-level provider. Part of the reason for this quick appointment schedule may be that 65% of these clinics have a physician on-site at all times.
The Best Urgent Care Offers Qualified Physicians
One of the reasons that urgent care clinics are so well staffed is that a single physician or a group of physicians owns approximately 50 percent of urgent care centers. As the nation continues to deal with more and more people having access to health care coverage through the Affordable Care Act, the medical industry may find itself in a struggle to provide enough physicians in the current health care platform.
Instead of relying on the typical patient care setting of family doctors, many are looking toward the health clinic platform to help meet the expected future needs. Projections by the Association of American Medical Colleges America indicate that America will be short more than 90,000 physicians by the year 2020 and 130,000 physicians by the year 2025.