An urgent care center is a way for a patient to be treated faster and helps supplement a resident physician's income.
Urgent care is a type of medical facility that helps patients that need medical treatment more quickly than their regular primary care physician can provide. Most cities within the United States have a number of these types of facilities with convenient office hours that extend beyond regular business hours and cater to small accidents or minor trauma that does not require the services of a full hospital emergency room. Many patients that have had mild trauma or small injuries are subjected to long waits in busy hospital emergency rooms and are left behind much more important and traumatic cases. If you do not want to spend hours in a hospital emergency room and would prefer to be seen quickly even if it costs a little more money, then visiting an urgent care medical facility may be the right option for you.
Urgent care centers are also a great way for doctors that are still in training to make money. Residency and fellowship programs are notorious for their long work hours and modest pay. For the number of hours that a resident spends in the hospital, he or she is literally making minimum wage based on the salary that they are pulling in. Massive student loan debt usually has to be deferred through residency training and physicians are actually happy that they work so much because then they don't have any time to spend money. One of the ways residents can make a little extra cash is to take a job at an urgent care center on the side. These medical facilities benefit from the relatively cheap labor of a physician with a medical license and the doctor gets further training in the art of medicine. Because the medical facility cannot take complicated or traumatic cases, most of the patients that a resident sees are well within their scope of practice and ability to treat.
In the end, both the patient and physician benefit from the urgent care facility services. It is a way for the patient to be seen faster and with less hassle. It is a way for the resident to get more medical training and a little bit of extra cash on the side to supplement the modest hospital salary they receive. If you have recently experience mild trauma or have flu-like symptoms and would like to be seen outside of your doctor's regular office hours, it may be in your best interests to visit a quick care medical facility in your neighborhood. It will save you time and money.
