Urgent Care Centers – In the Frontline for Providing Ambulatory Care

It is not unusual for persons to experience injuries or illnesses that require urgent care but are not serious enough to require specialized attention.

Such situations may occur at odd hours when primary care doctors’ offices are closed.

In a scenario like this where must you head to?

Care centers like Pentagon urgent clinic medical care are examples in this case. They are a boon to people because you have access to medical treatment at any time of the day on a walk-in basis without an appointment.

Urgent care centers started to mushroom in the United States in the 1970s. The growth has been rapid, and today urgent care clinics have expanded to nearly 10,000 across the United States.

The Urgent Care Association of America has put forth criteria for Urgent Care centers to benchmark the standard of care delivered to patients.

The qualifying criteria include:

• Must treat a broad assortment of illness and injuries
• Must have a qualified doctor as in-charge
• Should be open on all days in a week
• Must have separate facilities to treat minor injuries
• Must adhere to ethical business and medical care practices
• Must have onsite paraphernalia, such as x-ray and ECG

The growth of urgent care has been driven primarily because of long appointment times at primary care and difficulty in getting access for immediate care. But most importantly, availability of unscheduled appointments has been a boon to the public.

The present ongoing corona virus pandemic has thrown up challenges to the urgent care center business.

Fortunately, facilities like doctor medical clinic near Arlington have not ceased to treat patients throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.

To confront the possibility of a larger number of patients, this clinic has modified its triage processes to ensure safety of both its staff and patients.

According to the physician in charge, “We interact with every patient regardless of the symptoms they may have. We allow those patients in who have no Covid-19 symptoms and for those who display corona virus signs we provide them with further instructions”.

It is no doubt tough times for urgent care centers.

“We have to put in place contingency plans”, says a doctor at medical clinic near Arlington. “We must be able to manage increased patient numbers and also decrease in staff availability due to illnesses”.

Additionally, urgent care clinics must have adequate stock of personal protection equipment (PPE).

It is heartening to note that the urgent care business in the United States is in good readiness in this moment of crisis.

The clinics follow the established protocols and the staff morale is high.

Patients can confidently visit such clinics with an assurance that their health will be safeguarded in the best possible manner.

Covid-19 is likely to be with us for many more months.

You cannot ignore health emergencies even if they not life threatening.

Issues like sore throat, common flu, ear infections and stomach upsets need to be treated urgently.

With Urgent Care managing its operations in safe manner, patients can rest assured that even non-Covid-19 conditions are not ignored.