Every year the number of Americans who visit the Emergency Room increases. Concurrently, the number of hospitals that are closing their E.R.s is rising as well. This paradoxical shift has resulted in hundreds of thousands of Americans experiencing longer wait times at the Emergency Room, causing increased anxiety in an already stressful situation. Luckily, this article in The New York Times details some good tips and tricks for navigating the oftentimes overwhelming world that is the Emergency Room. For example, the author explains that if a treating provider has recommended a trip to the E.R., the patient should request for their doctor’s office to call ahead and provide some context for their arrival as well as some important background into their medical history. This will help streamline the process and hopefully cut down on unnecessary paperwork or lengthy expositions.
The writer also posits that another useful strategy in cutting down time spent in the E.R. is to always carry a list of current medications, allergies, and recent medical history in your wallet or purse. Keeping this list on hand and up-to-date will be useful if you’re is forgetful or otherwise unable to convey the necessary details of the medical situation. These are just some of the tips that the article provides for those who may have to find their way to an Emergency Room in the near future. If you have any others, please share your thoughts with us in the comments.
I’m not surprised ER visits increase each year. Our healthcare systems are often built around the ER. In my city, you cannot be admitted to the hospital without being triaged through the ER. My particular health plan has required me to be triaged through urgent care followed by the ER. This resulted in several hours of delay for a life threatening condition.
I know some patient treat for non-urgent issues through the ER, but I question whether this is more of a problem with the system than poor choices by patients.
I’m a main problems this is it emergency rooms are over utilized for non emergent conditions and this place is a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of resources when many of these people who have runny noses colds mineor stitches and other should be going to urgent care or their family practitioner to have these conditions dealt with at a much lower cost additionally people who have a limited income and do not have proper insurance coverage instead of going to the appropriate provider go to the emergency room on a first serve basis raises a lot of cost and puts a lot of stress on the welfare system with expensive emergency room visits which were unnecessary additionally emergency rooms off and have a lot of high costs Beyond what’s usually done and in a lot of cases even minor car accidents and other there’s a lot of Imaging and testing and other that’s conducted which is likely either not necessary or a little excessive
Some insurance companies appear to be putting additional fees or cost to the their clients for using emergency rooms and I found even in situations of kidney stones and other conditions the emergency room doesn’t really help you basically it’s only a stopgap until you can go see urologist or other professional who can really help you and a lot of times you spend an exorbitant amount of time in the emergency room and getting KU B and other films oftentimes of limited value.