The ER has become a sanctuary for society’s unmet needs
seattletimes.com
The ER has become a sanctuary for society’s unmet needs
1–10 of 114 posts
Re: The ER has become a sanctuary for society’s unmet needs
#2Libraries also function in this role, but for different types of problems.
Re: The ER has become a sanctuary for society’s unmet needs
#3On the flip side.. as someone who pays their bills, the ER has become the #1 priority to avoid. I'd prefer not to pay 5000 or 6000 total - $3000 to a hospital and $3000 to an ER doctor agency for a small 2nd degree burn or small cut requiring stitches, or any other issue I may have been taken there in the past for. I'll sew my child up before I take them to a pediatric ER and I'll order the antibiotics from India or Mexico..
An ER doctor makes $150-300/hr. I'll pay double or triple or 10x that but in my experience you are billed something like 100x that. 10 minutes is 3k. We can meet at a Holiday Inn. We'll arrive by Uber.
Re: The ER has become a sanctuary for society’s unmet needs
#4When you don't spend the time and money on preventative care as a society, you end up spending much, much more on emergency care. I feel like this has been quantitatively demonstrated again and again, but it's somehow still a political football.
Re: The ER has become a sanctuary for society’s unmet needs
#5[deleted]
Re: The ER has become a sanctuary for society’s unmet needs
#6When you don't spend the time and money on preventative care as a society, you end up spending much, much more on emergency care. I feel like this has been quantitatively demonstrated again and again, but it's somehow still a political football.
>"I feel like this has been quantitatively demonstrated again and again, but it's somehow still a political football."
I am aware of a number of studies which looked for a negative correlation between preventative care spending and overall healthcare spending, but all (of which I am aware) failed to find it.
Re: The ER has become a sanctuary for society’s unmet needs
#7On the flip side.. as someone who pays their bills, the ER has become the #1 priority to avoid. I'd prefer not to pay 5000 or 6000 total - $3000 to a hospital and $3000 to an ER doctor agency for a small 2nd degree burn or small cut requiring stitches, or any other issue I may have been taken there in the past for. I'll sew my child up before I take them to a pediatric ER and I'll order the antibiotics from India or…
It is robber baron type stuff. It is absolutely nuts. I completely understand people escaping ambulances to avoid a $10K Aspirin. I avoid going to the US on the off chance that I might need medical care.
Re: The ER has become a sanctuary for society’s unmet needs
#8Libraries also function in this role, but for different types of problems.
I was just about to mention that.
The vulnerability to this kind of exploitation takes a different from than the emergency room. The Internet, search engines, Google, and so on created a kind of identity crisis in the library world, partially stemming from the people who think that they're going to learn with any depth from a quick search, but also self-inflicted, "Who are we in a 'digital age'?" sort of wailing. And so libraries are forever giving away their lunch money hoping that someone will be their friend, stick up for them, validate their existence. This is especially true at the academic level.
Interesting, too, that one of the other big societal institutions open to all comers, the churches, have largely dwindled.
Re: The ER has become a sanctuary for society’s unmet needs
#9On the flip side.. as someone who pays their bills, the ER has become the #1 priority to avoid. I'd prefer not to pay 5000 or 6000 total - $3000 to a hospital and $3000 to an ER doctor agency for a small 2nd degree burn or small cut requiring stitches, or any other issue I may have been taken there in the past for. I'll sew my child up before I take them to a pediatric ER and I'll order the antibiotics from India or…
It is robber baron type stuff. It is absolutely nuts. I completely understand people escaping ambulances to avoid a $10K Aspirin. I avoid going to the US on the off chance that I might need medical care.
There's expensive insurance products for a short term trip. They'll even fly you back to wherever you're from if it's serious enough.
Re: The ER has become a sanctuary for society’s unmet needs
#10> Increasingly, the staff of the ED who have always upheld the proud notion of being the one place where the doors are always open to anyone who needs care at any time, have felt besieged.
Yeah, okay.
At another nearby "nonprofit" local hospital, not atypically: (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/25/podcasts/the-daily/nonpro...)
> The centerpiece of this program were a series of scripts, like theatrical scripts, that outlined in this play exactly how employees should try to get money from patients, even those who are supposed to receive free care. And these documents were distributed to anyone at the hospital who might interact with patients and talk to them about payment.
> So in one training document, for example, the employees were told, do not accept the first no. And then staff are led through a series of questions to ask patients. The first was, how would you like to pay that today? If that question didn’t work, employees were told to ask for half the balance. If that didn’t work, staff could offer to set up a payment plan, like the kind that Alexandra went on. And what’s critically missing from this collection program is any way of screening patients to determine whether they should qualify for free care.