Urgent Care Clinics' Advantages

When someone goes to an urgent care facility, they can expect to be treated or assessed for a medical condition. Most of the cases brought to the clinic do not warrant emergency attention but still need medical treatment within twenty-four hours of it happening. Circumstances that are life and death should be brought to a hospital as well as those which may cause impairment in the patient. When the patient's condition cannot be treated at the clinic, the staff or primary doctors will recommend a nearby hospital where he can be brought for extensive treatment. Walk-ins are the usual patients in such a clinic and the services there include, but are not limited to, dentistry, gynecology, obstetrics, general medicine and many others. There are a certain criteria that the establishment needs to keep up in order for them to be allowed to function and serve others by the governing agency in charge of their license to operate.

Standard Procedure

In an urgent care facility, there are receptionists who will schedule the patients according to how early they have arrived at the facility. It is usually a first come first serve basis but it is also possible to make a scheduled meeting beforehand if the doctor allows it. It is all dependent on the rules and regulations of the facility. A record of the patient is usually required which will state the complaints of the patient or what he might be feeling which prompted him to visit the clinic. This record will be a form of history that will be available to his doctor when needed. The patient might be aware of the gravity of his condition which will help him discern when he needs to go to a hospital instead of an urgent care clinic. For those who are not self-aware of the gravity of his condition, a visit to the small clinic may suffice and he will be moved to a hospital that can attend to his condition more extensively.

Advantages

The advantages of going to such an establishment for minor or non-life threatening issues is that there is a shorter wait compared to those in emergency sections of a hospital. If the issue is not life threatening, hospital will relegate the patient behind those with life threatening conditions. Another benefit of visiting an urgent care facility is that they can actually diagnose the patient if it is a life threatening condition and then recommend him to a hospital that can handle him. It is like going to a hospital emergency room without the hordes of emergency cases waiting in line. At least, a doctor has actually diagnosed the patient and has read the emergency situation enough to send him to a place which can treat him accordingly. One more advantage of visiting this kind of clinic is the proximity that most of these facilities have to residential neighborhoods compared to hospitals. Urgent care clinics are usually strategically located to serve neighborhoods that are far from hospitals. Their proximity to neighborhoods is a big benefit for the community.