Emergency Rooms

[ctnjason]

Good morning from the east coast at 1230AM.

Im an employee in the field of emergency medicine and ive come to notice a few things in my 10 year career. These things MUST be addressed. Feel free to respond to this especially if you are in the medical field.

Ive noticed that If I personally need ANY health care, i must get pre-approved, wait months to get in to my dr, go where my network says i can go AND thats not even if im to see a specialist..... NOW.....

In ANY large city in America, if you are poor/no insurance/drunk/homeless/ or on medicaid/medicare, you can go into ANY large hospitals Emergency room and get IMMEDIATE care. These large facilities have on call specialist as well so you can see one of those in a timely manner as well..... this brings me to my most current observation:

My current consensus of patient exist of this:
1) elderly that cant see a primary care doctor because they wont accept them due to government red tape.
2) homeless drunks that call 911 and go lay down on the ground. I agree that homeless need care.....but do they have to be drunk when they get here
3) Hispanic patients with NO ID, insurance, non english speaking.....
4) Trauma which is indeed a REAL emergency (stabbings, car accidents, gunshots, etc.
5) Appendicitis

this is primarily it. You will NEVER see ANY middle class person show up in the emergency room for a sore throat. The people that abuse this system are either filthy rich or have NOTHING to lose from it.

Health Care needs IMMEDIATE REFORM NOW! This trend in emergency medicine will single handedly cause emergency departments to close if not entire hospitals.

 

[Meadophile]

I work in an Emergency Room as well. I find we have those same issues here. Especially the problem with illegals.

 

[driller80545]

What can be done? You have inside expirience that we don't have. How do we go about fixing this. Pay as you go? Refuse care to poor? I would be very interested in hearing what you think about this as you have obviously put some thought into it. Thanks

 

[thisisgiparti]

2) homeless drunks that call 911 and go lay down on the ground. I agree that homeless need care.....but do they have to be drunk when they get here

Given 1, 3, 4 and 5, I would show up drunk, too. Especially if you know you're gonna be there a while.

 

[ctnjason]

I honestly think that the hospital should give the care, treat accordingly BUT as bad as it sounds, there should be a swift and just follow up legally as in the authorities can show up at the patients room and or home once they have been treated and / or are stable. I know people will scream inhumanity but its sad when i have to pull teeth and fight mounds of beuracracy just to see a specialist.

 

[ConstitutionGal]

Before the government got so involved with mandating all manner of things regarding health care, you could actually go pay for a visit to the doctor of your choice for less cash than we currently pay in co-payments. People only carried major medical insurance for surgeries and catastrophic illnesses. Enter the government and all their regulations and mandates and, voila', it now costs hundreds of dollars simply to go to a doctor for a check up so most folks that don't have privately or company paid REALLY good insurance, wait until those minors things turn into major things and then show up at the emergency room where, once again due to federal mandates, they cannot be refused treatment. Of course, this drives up the hospital's costs and then drives up the insurance costs as these free-loader's bills are passed on to everyone else. Charity (mostly church run) hospitals used to care for really indigent people through private donations but, here we go again, the government has gotten so many people dependent on the nanny-state that no one wants to remember how we did things just 40 years ago!

 

[Meadophile]

What can be done? You have inside expirience that we don't have. How do we go about fixing this. Pay as you go? Refuse care to poor? I would be very interested in hearing what you think about this as you have obviously put some thought into it. Thanks

The hospital I work at is a non-profit. Because of that we cannot refuse to see patients, even if the patient has no money whatsoever. That means patients get treated here no matter what. I actually have no problem with that.

What I have a problem with is millions of illegals in our country getting free healthcare. If we got rid of the illegals, we'd have more money to spend on our own citizens.

I don't believe that a very sick illegal should not be treated. They should. But, they shouldn't be here in the first place.

 

[driller80545]

I had a heart attack two years ago. I have no insurance. I had it for thirty years, but when I reached sixty, the cost of the insurance got so high that I had to let it drop. My heart attack bill is seventy thousand dollars. They saved my life and I will spend the rest of my life paying for it. The only thing that bothers me about this is that another person that I know had the exact same problem that I had, he had insurance, and his bill to the insurance company is only eighteen thousand dollars. He had the same procedure, spent the same amount of time hospitalized. No reason for the huge difference in the bill. I don't mind spending the rest of my life paying the hospital, but it upsets me that I am charged almost four hundred percent penalty for not being insured. And no, we are not talking about interest. That takes the bill into the stratosphere.
Funny thing though, the payment that I make to the hospital every month is still less than want the insurance company wanted every month to insure me. After my heart attack, I would be afraid to find out what insurance would cost. I haven't even bothered to inquire.