Walk in clinic hours at traditional healthcare facilities are not always convenient. People can become injured or ill during all times of the day, which often used to leave them the only option of going to an emergency room. Especially lately, emergency rooms have become overcrowded and expensive. 24 hour urgent care centers offer walk in clinic services all day every day, with dramatically lower wait times than emergency rooms.

Urgent care centers have become so popular that nearly 7,000 of them now exist in the US. Essentially, urgent care centers are clinics separate from normal hospitals and emergency rooms that can treat injuries or illnesses that, while not serious or life threatening, still require immediate care. Mild broken bones, sprains, and digestive illnesses are common problems treated by urgent care centers. There are about 6.8 million bones broken each year in the US. Many of these cases do not require the full services of an emergency room, but can be handled in an urgent care clinic. In fact, around $4.4 billion could be saved every year if all cases that could be treated by an urgent care facility were in fact treated by one. Also, urgent care centers operate entirely on a walk in basis, so you never need to worry about appointments or special walk in clinic hours.

As urgent care centers grow in popularity and expand, so will the services that they can provide. In addition to their normal walk in clinic hours, some urgent care centers are actually filling prescriptions on site so that their patients can begin treatment immediately. If you are worried about walk in clinic hours or wait times, urgent care centers may be able to help you to get the rapid treatment that you will need during your next emergency. More can be found here.