It is an unfortunate fact that even with today’s safety standards and medicine, sometimes people will get ill or injured in a variety of ways throughout their lives, but the good news is that modern medicine offers a variety of health care services for nearly any malady, and often at a fair price. A walk in clinic, for example, is a convenient, low cost way to find health care for lesser maladies, or at least those that are not life threatening. How can one find a walk in clinic where they live, and how can urgent care there be different from a hospital’s ER? Walk in urgent care is there for those who need it and know how to find it.

What ailments can be treated at a walk in clinic? That is, what health problems can prompt a person to find an urgent care facility? Some conditions, such as large broken bones, serious chest pain, stab wounds, and breathing difficulty call for an ER visit, which is entirely different from a walk in clinic, and the two should not be confused with each other. Not the least because an ER is more expensive, and a patient at an ER who does not need that level of care is taking up space that another patient with a life threatening condition would need.

Instead, lesser health problems will necessitate a visit to a walk in clinic. Examples include broken fingers or toes, rashes or blisters, mild allergies (as in, they do not seriously threaten the patient’s breathing), the common cold and flu, smaller cuts and scrapes, and the like. What is more, visiting a walk in clinic is an opportunity for one to refill prescription medicine or to get a prescription. After all, the average child may catch anything from six to 10 colds per year, and adults may not need a clinic for one, but they could come down with the flu instead, which could necessitate a visit. Ankle sprains are another reason to get walk in urgent care; some 25,000 Americans will get an ankle sprain on each day, and this condition can be treated at a walk in clinic.

Walk in clinics are much more affordable than an ER, and often, the wait times are manageable too, despite how many people visit these facilities. A 2016 Benchmarking Report showed that in 92% of cases in the year 2015, walk in clinic patients had a wait time of half an hour or under, and sometimes, the wait time can be as little as 15 minutes. It is not uncommon for a clinic to see three patients per hour, putting the wait time somewhere between 15 and 30 minutes, statistically. There are thousands of such care facilities across the United States, so every major urban center, and many lesser ones, should have at least one walk in clinic where local residents can go.

When someone suffers a malady that calls for a visit to a clinic, finding one can be as simple as performing an Internet search for “24 hour walk in clinics near me”, and results should appear, complete with addresses and travel directions. What is more, a number of clinics are in fact retail clinics, meaning they are built into such major retailers like Target, Wal-Mart, and Walgreens, which means that locating these places and finding parking should be easy, since the parent retailer needs both of those things to get maximum customers. Such retail clinics may also offer services such as offering and refilling prescriptions and other medical assistance. Many walk in clinics are independent or are part of a small, independent network that only has a few locations.

A doctor is sometimes needed, and a walk in clinic may have nurses or physicians on hand, but if needed, a person’s private doctor should be seen, since that doctor will have the patient’s medical history and needs and personal details on hand, allowing them to give more specialized care. The same can be said of a pediatrician, who specializes in younger patients aged newborn to 18, but they often require an appointment to be visited. Whenever a minor but still urgent medical case comes up, a person can visit a walk in clinic and get the treatment they need.