Drink your Milk Take your Vitamins Avoid the Emergency Room

In our current year, emergency room visits total about 110 million a year. That is an obscene number. If you find yourself in need of urgent health care, but it is not of emergency room standards, you have another option. If you still need immediate care applied to your injury, look for an urgent care facility. This urgent care movement began back in the 1970s, but has seen exponential growth across the globe since its inception. In fact, urgent care facilities account for about $14 billion worth of annual revenue in the States alone.

These medical centers provide patients with medical service for conditions that are almost, but not quite, emergencies. However, they do still provide rapid attention to patients. Emergency rooms should only be frequented by those at risk of losing life or limb. That is the true definition of emergency. Under 75, the most common fracture is the wrist. Over 75, it is the hip. If you find yourself with either of these, nothing is going to fall off, need to be amputated, or kill you, so first call your doctor. If your doctor is unreachable, go to urgent care, no matter the time. Most urgent care hours are all day. 24 hour urgent care is growing more common, with a doctor always present to help, and a solid staff both day and night.

The immediate care facilities sprung up to help alleviate some of the burden of the emergency rooms, and it is a decent business! People always get hurt, and will need to go somewhere for it. If there is an all hours facility that offers immediate care that is not the emergency room, people will choose that option. The biggest problem right now is that sometimes people are unaware of the existence of urgent facilities, or think that their injury is worse than it actually is.

Not knowing is no excuse. Everyone should be aware of addresses, hours, and phone numbers of all of the medical facilities within 10 miles of where they live (this includes veterinarians!), just in case of emergencies. The way to combat overreaction is to first take a few deep breaths before you decide anything. If it is a true emergency, everyone will benefit from you being calm and levelheaded. And if it is not an emergency, at least you will be collected enough to get the injured to an urgent care facility, where they may be tended to sooner than if they had actually been brought to the emergency room. Research more like this. Good refereneces.