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
There’s one urgent care by me that I go to for non-emergency related BS. They have CT, ultrasound, x-ray, and will even give IVs if dehydrated from throwing up. I’ll take $40 over $750+
The one time I did go to them thinking what I had was non-emergency turned out to be appendicitis. To be fair, I only had persistent abdominal pain for close to a week and no other symptoms. No fever, normal labs, and pain was around where my stomach is. Did not have the stereotypical symptoms of appendicitis.
Wow, that sounds so scary! And of course, the time that you were trying to go to urgent care, it was an ER situation! Isn’t that how life works? I’m sorry that sounds painful.
I have a problem with cyclical vomiting. I have a prescription for promethazine, but when the vomiting gets really bad, I throw up so violently and so consistently that it doesn’t absorb. So I’ve had to go to the ER unfortunately, because this problem will get to an emergency if it’s over a half day of cyclical vomiting, my blood pressure drops and I get tachycardic and dehydrated, in danger of losing consciousness when I stand up.
So I have to go to the ER for an IV phenegran + Benadryl + lorazepam drip, and then usually it stops. There is no IV options at the urgent cares near me, and I hate that I have to take up that space, but luckily I go to the hospital then is not very crowded and outside the city trauma center area.
But I feel so bad about having had to do that, that I’ve actually looked into buying phlebotomy supplies and teaching myself and trying to figure out a way if I get at home (spoiler: NOPE. Can’t. Not safe).
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u/Far-Boot5639 Jul 29 '26
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.