Medical crises can happen at any time. However, your primary care doctor may not be available when you fall ill or suffer an injury. Further, your health crisis may be so significant that your primary care physician cannot treat it sufficiently.

Instead of waiting for your doctor's office to open or waiting hours for treatment at the emergency room, you can go to a clinic that is designed to address dire health conditions. You can seek help for your illnesses or injuries by going to an urgent care facility. 

Strep Throat

When you suspect that you have strep throat, you can go to an urgent care clinic for treatment. Strep throat may be an acute illness. However, it can induce symptoms that can cause both physical and mental distress. To find out for sure whether or not you have strep throat, you can go to an urgent care facility for a throat swab. The healthcare provider will take a sample of the back of your throat with a cotton swab. They will then run it through a rapid strep test to find out if the sample grows strep bacteria.

If the test is positive for this bacteria, it will signal to the doctor that you should be prescribed antibiotics to kill the strep infection. You can walk out of the urgent care facility with a prescription to take that will eliminate your symptoms and make you feel better within a matter of days.

Fractures

You can also go to an urgent care clinic to have fractures diagnosed and set. As long as the bone does not protrude from the skin, it can be set back into place at most urgent care facilities. The doctor on staff can take an X-ray of your fracture then put a cast over it to keep it in place and begin the healing process.

The urgent care doctor will also give you a referral to an orthopedic doctor for further treatment. However, they can put on your initial cast and stabilize the bone until you can get in and see an orthopedic doctor for more specialized care of your fracture.

An urgent care clinic can provide critical healthcare services for injuries and illnesses. You can visit one of these facilities if you suspect that you have something like strep throat. You can also get X-rays, casts, and orthopedic referrals for fractured bones. Contact an urgent care facility for more information.