When injuries and acutely arising conditions occur, people need to seek medical treatment. In many cases, individuals realize that their condition may only require the services of their primary care physician. But because appointments are needed and most physicians work from offices that are only open during normal weekly business hours, people will need to seek other options to treat their conditions. This often results in people going to the emergency room for conditions that are not necessarily severe enough to warrant emergency medical services. Seeing as it is the only option they know of though, they go through with an emergency room trip and end up with very costly bills that could have been avoided. For conditions that are not ssevere enough for the emergency room but still require immediate care, individuals in the Scottsdale and Phoenix, Arizona can go to 24 hour urgent care facilities.
The popularity of urgent and immediate care centers is continuously rising due to the walk in basis that they operate on. Even though they have a walk in basis though, an urgent care facility will generally have a shorter waiting time than an emergency room. Currently in the United States, there are approximately 129,043 people employed by urgent care centers. About 65 percent of centers have at least one physician on site at all times, while nearly two thirds of centers employ a mix of physicians, physicians assistants, and nurse practitioners.
The Rand Corporation conducted a study in 2010 that found that nearly one in five visits to emergency rooms could be treated at immediate care centers, which could potentially save 4.4 billion dollars a year in health care costs. In the United States each year, there are approximately 6.8 million broken bones. Many people believe that when they have a broken bone, they must go to the emergency room. Urgent care centers can actually treat broken bones though and provide x rays to asses the severity of them. Those in the Scottsdale and Phoenix, Arizona area who need immediate medical care that may not be severe enough to warrant an emergency room visit can go to an urgent care center. This is a great source for more.