When people have an unexpected medical condition occur that may require immediate care, they will most likely go the emergency room for treatment. This seems to happen almost instinctively in the United States. One of the understandable possible reasons for this is that people do not want to risk their condition worsening if they wait to have it treated. Another main contributing factor to the frequency of emergency room visits is that primary care physicians usually only offer services at their offices during the day on weekdays. So many times, people see the emergency room as their only viable option for treatment. The issue, though, is that many visits to the emergency room actually do not involve conditions that are severe enough to necessitate the services of an emergency room. For this reason, urgent care facilities exist to provide care that is still immediate, but intended for conditions that are not as severe as those that need to be tended to in an emergency room. In Washington cities such as Lynwood, Seattle, and Burien, people can find urgent care facilities that offer immediate medical care for less severe conditions.

A study by the Rand Corporation in 2010 showed that almost one in every five emergency room visits could be treated at an urgent care facility. If that had been the case, it could have potentially saved the United States over 4 billion dollars in health care costs. Those who are able to find urgent care centers in their area will find that such facilities can ease the burden of emergency room visits with treatments for illnesses and injuries that are not life threatening. Broken bones are a common reason for people to find urgent care centers rather than going to the emergency room, with the wrist being the most common fracture for people under the age of 75 and the hip being the most common fracture for those over the age of 75. In addition to their main objecxtive of treating acutely rising conditions, urgent care centers are now increasingly providing X rays as well as lab services and routine physicals. Check out this website for more.