When you sprain your ankle, have a sharp pain in your side, have a terrible headache, your child wakes up screaming from an earache, or your child falls off the bike and is bleeding.

That’s the nightmare in today’s health care system in the United States -- the non-life-threatening illness or injury that is painful or debilitating.

Your doctor can’t see you for a week, but you can’t wait a week, or even a day. It hurts too much. But you know that going to a hospital emergency room with something relatively minor means a long and uncomfortable wait – perhaps sitting in a waiting room for 6, 8 hours or more.

It doesn’t matter how good your insurance is, or how much money you have. It is a nightmare.

What should you do when that minor emergency strikes? The answer is an Urgent Care Center.

An Urgent Care Center is designed to fill that gap between your doctor and the emergency room, a place where you can receive prompt attention without an appointment. But the public does not know much about
Urgent Care Centers, and not all Urgent Care Centers are the same.