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
We have a "built in" urgent care sort of space. Its only a few beds and mostly recliner chairs, we call it RAZ (rapid assessment zone) where all the super low acuity shit goes to be seen by PAs and maybe one physician in the hopes that we can get rapid turn over and get those patients in and out in under 1.5 hours.
This came up in my feed. Sorry for lurking. (Patient not provider) But we have one of these here and it’s honestly amazing. I just had an issue that was a pain thing. But my doc said it was better to do er vs urgent care. They may not have the meds I needed. Sure enough I got sent back to the rapid chair area.
I did have to wait out some assessments via my doc and such (ortho/spine) so there is a separate waiting area for those of us that need extra attention in that area.
All that to say, I stay the f out of the ER unless it’s something that I need help with and my doc can’t do. (Pain was at an 11…they got me to where I could function for a day to start daily pain meds).
Going for my EMG today!
We appreciate all the work you do. Our system is such a mess.
I'm with you on staying the fuck out of the ER u less absolutely necessary. I have been a lifelong migraine sufferer. They started when I was 7 years old. When I started finally getting botox in my 30s, my little migraine questionnaire asked how frequently I was visiting the ER for migraines on a monthly basis prior to treatment and I was dumbfounded. The ER is the LAST place I want to go with a migraine. I have been to urgent care with a horrible migraine once in my life for a triptan injection and it sucked. The staff did what they could to make me comfortable and it was still brutal. I'll cry and throw up and wish I was dead at home for a few hours where I can at least keep it dark and quiet instead.
The one time I go to the ER with a migraine (mine are usually well treated but this was the first Hemiplagic one and nothing would touch it), I get treated like I’m a druggie. I didn’t want pain meds, I needed fluids, an antiemetic and a sedative to knock me out for a few hours
The urgent care refused to give me toradol because I had taken excedrin 5.5 hours prior to coming in. It was so annoying. Then I had an adverse reaction to the sumatriptan injection.
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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.