Understanding What Your Health Clinic Offers

Posted on: 1 September 2015

Are you feeling sick or otherwise wondering if your current state of health means that you should go to the hospital? Is your doctor's office closed for the weekend, so you're unable to schedule an appointment? When dealing with the world of medicine, it can sometimes be difficult to know where to turn. Fortunately, if you have an urgent care clinic nearby, they may be just what you're looking for. Here are some services you may not have realized that your local clinic offers:

Monitoring of chronic conditions: If you have diabetes, asthma, high cholesterol or other chronic conditions, you probably already make regular doctor visits for checkups and to pick up prescriptions for new medicine. Unfortunately, treating these health issues can feel like a full time job. If you experience a flare-up over the weekend or overnight, your first instinct is probably to check into your nearest emergency room. But instead of waiting hours to be seen by a hospital physician, you could pay a visit to your nearest urgent care clinic. Because you won't be bumped down the waiting list by a patient suffering from a heart attack or stroke, you should be in and out much quicker than you would be at your local hospital.

Vaccines: If you're planning to travel soon, you may need to be vaccinated for various types of diseases. When this travel happens suddenly, your doctor's office may not have an open appointment in time for you to get your shots. Fortunately, many urgent care clinics stock not just basic vaccines, such as tetanus, but may also have shots for things like typhoid and rabies. While most clinics are first come, first served, make sure to contact them before you make any plans. They may have run out or need to special order a particular vaccine.

Treatment of skin conditions: Your local urgent care clinic should have diverse treatment options available for a wide variety of skin conditions. These can be relatively common, such as poison ivy or poison oak rashes, or more complicated issues like eczema or impetigo. The doctors and nurses on staff will be able to provide a diagnosis and prescribe the correct medicine in order to treat what ails you. Instead of having to wait several days for your family doctor to see you about a ringworm infection, you'll be able to be in and out of your local urgent care clinic on the same day. Contact St. Luke's Rehabilitation or your local urgent care clinic to learn more.