From breathing difficulties to sprained and twisted ankles, medical complaints, often minor ones, are incredibly commonplace here in the United States. For many of these complaints, such as cases of breathing difficulties, medical treatment is likely to be necessary – even just a medical examination to make sure that these breathing difficulties are not the sign of something more serious. But getting that care can be difficult, to say the least.

For instance, developing breathing difficulties often means a trip to the emergency room, especially during hours when the typical general care practitioner’s office has closed, such as in early mornings, evenings, and on the weekends. But though some breathing difficulties will be severe and in need of immediate medical attention and whatever the effective treatment might be, many a case of breathing difficulties is much more mild in origin and can wait for medical attention. In the typical emergency room, this oftentimes means an hour long wait – or even more time spent in the waiting room before actually seeing any type of medical professional.

And emergency room visits can be extraordinarily expensive as well, so much so that many people will simply try to avoid the need for getting medical treatment at all, something that can have profound and serious consequences, to say the least. Typically, the average person can expect to pay at least $500 after even a minor emergency room visit. In many cases, however, this number will jump to a total of more than $1,000, sometimes even considerably more. For many people, this will lead to issues of medical debt that last for quite some time.

Fortunately, local urgent care centers are able to provide the immediate medical attention that many people need, for breathing difficulties and other medical issues, at a mere fraction of the cost of a local emergency room. For many urgent care locations, the wait times are much more ideal as well. As a matter of fact, more than 90% of all urgent care clinics boast waiting times of less than a mere half of an hour. In addition to this, up to 60% of all urgent care centers found throughout the country will have an average waiting time of no more than 15 minutes. It is not uncommon in these medical centers for patients to come in, receive the treatment that they need, and be sent on their way all within the span of just one single hour, making urgent care center treatment ideal for those fitting in a doctor’s visit into an already jam packed schedule.

And urgent care centers can provide a better variety of comprehensive treatment than many people realize, even for matters like fractures and breathing difficulties. Recent data even shows that up to 80% of all urgent care locations are able to both diagnose and treat fractures of varying natures. And less than 5% of all cases seen in an urgent care setting (around 3%, to be a little bit more exact) ever need to be transferred to a hospital for more thorough emergency care. In addition to this, it has actually been found that up to 65% of all emergency room cases could actually have been treated with ease in the local urgent care center instead.

Of course, urgent care locations are also able to deal with much less severe medical concerns as well as the more serious ones. For instance, infections are typically treated with ease at urgent care centers. Urinary tract infections are commonly seen, as there are more than eight million of these UTIs diagnosed over the period of a single year here in the United States alone. Fortunately, the vast majority of them can be treated with a simple round of antibiotics, something that just about anyone can withstand.

In addition to this, minor wound repair can also be performed at many an urgent care center. Treating a sprained ankle is common, as up to 25,000 sprained ankles will occur each and every day here in the United States. Fortunately, they are easy to treat with proper attention to detail, saving the patient from a trip to the emergency room.