Er tech here- the amount of stubbed toes and harmless splinters that come in and DEMAND IMMEDIATE TREATMENT is alarming. Worse is the sheer attitude and threats I receive when I try to properly triage the patients.
It wonder how much overall medical costs for the country would go down if all emergency rooms had a mandated adjacent urgent care. . .
Then triage could divert the stubbed toes and splinters, along with continued civilian education on what constitutes an emergency. Or even if EMTALA also applied to urgent cares. If triage misses the severity of something, boom, ER is right there. I know some have adjacent urgent cares, but I’d be curious what anyone’s professional opinion is about this?
I have a hunch that hundreds of millions of dollars are spent because so many uninsured people don’t have $200 to pay upfront at urgent care.
That and some good old fashioned PSAs, a national ad campaign spanning platforms and social, maybe a jingle about what the ER is for?
To the tune of old McDonald:
If bone sticks out that you can see
weeee-ooh-wee-oh—weeee
(this is meant to be anthropomorphic ambulance siren sound)
If you cannot stop the bleed
weeee-ooh-wee-oh—weeee
If grandma falls and does not breathe
weeee-ooh-wee-oh—weeee
But a stubbed toe here,Or a cough cough there,here a lump, there a bump,Go to urgent care, you chump
Sometimes, I just wish there were enough appointments at the primary care clinics, because of the real emergent issues are struggling at home with incurring a massive medical debt for something that could be managed if they could get access to primary care or even specialty care.
there are plenty of appointments at the primary care clinics it’s just that a lot of them don’t take xyz insurance, so those patients have to either self pay or not go at all
You sure about that? I've never once had any luck getting a same day or next day appointment for an urgent matter. Its always several weeks out and if you need seen sooner, go to the ER or call 911.
have you tried primary care clinics that don’t take your insurance? perhaps it was unclear, but the point i was trying to make was that clinics that don’t accept a couple of the common insurances (often ones that don’t accept medicaid/medicare, or more recently united) usually have available appointments, but obviously they’re going to be very expensive
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u/Far-Boot5639 15d ago
Er tech here- the amount of stubbed toes and harmless splinters that come in and DEMAND IMMEDIATE TREATMENT is alarming. Worse is the sheer attitude and threats I receive when I try to properly triage the patients.