The last time you had to visit a busy emergency room, there's a good chance you waited an hour, or more, to see a doctor. It sometimes takes days to get an appointment with your family doctor. More and more people are turning to convenient urgent care clinics for quick treatment.

Urgent care clinics are a growth industry in health care. About 10,000 of them are operating in the U.S. right now and hundreds more are opening each year.

Former emergency room doctor Marilyn Gibbs is opening an urgent care clinic in Kent, part of a national franchise, Doctors Express. It's located next to a dry cleaners and a sandwich shop, across from Starbucks in a strip mall on the busy West Valley Highway.

Gibbs worked in the E.R. at Valley Medical Center for 20 years.

"I love emergency medicine, you never know what's coming through the door," said Gibbs. "It's very exciting, demanding, I never had a boring day and I see urgent care as just a step down from that, but you still don't know what's coming through that door."

In the E.R., she also saw the need for more walk-in clinics that could handle non-emergency patients right away.

"I can't tell you how many people I saw in the emergency room saying 'I know, I really shouldn't be here but my doctor couldn't get me in and I felt so bad I just didn't think I could go another day,'" said Gibbs.

It's estimated as many as 30 percent of emergency room patients don't need an E.R. Problem such as "colds, coughs, sprains, fractures, lacerations that don't need to be in an emergency room; urgent care could serve them quite well and they wouldn't be waiting," said Gibbs.

Urgent care clinics are treating patients for about a quarter of the cost of emergency room treatment. The reason is all the sophisticated and expensive equipment found in a modern E.R.

"There's less burden on the health care system and it's cheaper to provide care in a center where you're not geared for a guy having a heart attack or a stroke," said Gibbs.

Urgent care centers generally are more costly than a visit to a doctor office but they also accept Medicare and most large insurance plans. They take walk-ins with a minimal wait and they're open evenings and weekends.

"I just came in for a shot so it wasn't something I needed to go to a hospital for [...] and your appointment is right when you walk in, basically," said one woman leaving an urgent care clinic in Seattle.

Urgent care medicine is a recognized specialty with 20,000 doctors currently practicing.

Tim Haeck, 97.3 KIRO FM Reporter

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