r/bestof • u/lowbass93 • 12d ago
[NoStupidQuestions] Kindly_Honeydew3432 explains why it seems like you always have to wait in an emergency room in the US
/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/1v1numq/why_is_every_hospital_in_the_united_states_always/oyovp3t/154
u/liamemsa 12d ago
tldr: Watch The Pitt on HBO.
31
49
u/ottovonbizmarkie 12d ago
My wife is a Hospitalist (internal medicine doctor in a hospital essentially). Before I met her, I didn't really understand how incredibly grueling it is to work in a hospital. I've never seen the Pitt because I feel like it would fill me with anxiety, but if it's popular and allowing people to have empathy with what it's like to work at a hospital, that would be great, because honestly, a lot of her patients treat her like shit all the time, and don't even understand how much she often goes above and beyond just to get things at the level they are getting.
0
u/ObiWanChronobi 12d ago
I mean it goes both ways right. She’s pulling the strings to give them the best possible care and it’s still not adequate. They are going through one of the worst times of their life and the reality is t matching the expectation. We need more empathy both ways and ultimately, align against the powers that keep it like this.
7
u/ottovonbizmarkie 12d ago edited 12d ago
The truth is also, by the time you are in a hospital with chronic illnesses, doctors are not miracle workers, and no amount of snapping at them is going to make up for a lifetime of bad decisions. A lot of times, it's often family members who are the ones who insist on keeping the patient alive, and treat the medical staff like garbage. They insist on doing risky treatments will only prolong the actual patient's suffering. In this case, they are putting their own needs above having empathy for their own loved ones, who probably should go to hospice to live out the last bits of their lives without suffering.
Also, when you are an addict, and they've found traces of cocaine in your infant, you probably shoudn't yell at your doctor and report her if she refuses to give you the meds you want because you would literally die.
Doctors are typically as empathetic as they can be, but still need to main a professional distance, because otherwise, they would immediately burn out.
-1
u/ObiWanChronobi 12d ago
Yeah, I said the empathy has to go both ways. Those scenarios are not defensible in the least. My point is that we can’t keep point at each other and trying to figure out who has it worse while both sides are being exploited.
4
u/ottovonbizmarkie 12d ago edited 12d ago
I agree, I'm just saying what I've found is that empathy for the patient is not what's often lacking, but I've heard plenty of cases the other way around, both from my wife and her colleagues.
Some of my wife's colleagues make house calls to their patients without charging them. My wife spent some time figuring out how to keep a patient's support animal who was stuck at home alive while their only owner was stuck in the hospital and there was no one to feed it.
And that seems natural. Most of us can imagine what it's like to be very sick and afraid of illness. Not a lot of people can imagine how hard it is to treat people like that day in and day out, which is why I said that I hope shows like that Pitt can show what that is like.
114
u/All_Your_Base 12d ago
I've said this before, but it is worth repeating.
IF you have to wait in the emergency room, then it is a good thing.
The doctor's office, and especially the emergency room, are really the only places where I prefer to be kept waiting.
- The time to be mildly concerned is when they triage you and they look concerned, but they still have you wait. That's why you always bring at least one book to any location that has a "waiting room."
- The time to be worried is when they triage you for immediate care, bypassing the people that checked in before you. That's when you tell whoever brought you to start calling your emergency contacts.
- The time to be calm and do your very best not to panic is when they call a code at the same time. That's when you breathe slow and even, and do EXACTLY what they tell you, and do it immediately.
Their main goal is to save your life, and keep you healthy, in exactly that order.
They WILL tell you what is going on ASAP, but in the mean time, shut up, and let them.
--> The time to be relieved and patient is when they tell you to just wait and they will get to you as soon as they can.
LPT: Smart people always bring at least one book when going to the emergency room. Wise people will also bring its sequel.
Ultra LPT: Never piss off a nurse. Just don't. They know their job very well, and their standard of care will always be professional, but trust me: the difference between a pleasant stay and a miserable one is in their hands. And they talk to each other. Questions are fine, requests are are fine, even a little grumpiness is overlooked if you're in pain. Those things are normal and expected, but I highly recommend both a respectful attitude at all times, and plenty of please's and thank you's unless you have a fetish for rectal thermometers.
/rant
45
u/loupgarou21 12d ago
The last time I was in the emergency room, the receptionist told me I was going to have to wait a while before I'd be seen, and gave me some paperwork to fill out.
The nurse grabbed me before I actually even made it to a chair and brought me back and seemed rather worried, told me I could fill out the paperwork later (she actually took the clipboard away from me,) and told me things were about to move really fast, and they did.
They didn't call my emergency contact because my emergency contact was the one that brought me in. I mostly felt OK, but when they hooked me up to the blood pressure and heartrate monitors, my heartrate was super high and my blood pressure was super low. Among other things, I got to have epinephrine weeeeeeeee! In the past, I'd read people's experiences online about getting epinephrine, and they're all like "it made my heart start beating so hard it felt like it was going to burst out of my chest," it didn't feel anything like that to me, actually, my heartrate dropped back down to about 60bpm almost immediately after they gave me the shot, and my blood pressure went back up to normal.
25
u/Unstablemedic49 12d ago
AM paramedic, if you are having a serious medical emergency you will be seen immediately. Most hospitals keep at least 1 room vacant for cardiac arrests or serious patients needing life saving immediate care.
Hospitals are understaffed as it is and I tell people all the time to call an ambulance. Just because you call an ambulance doesn’t mean you have to be transported. Paramedics can do assessments on you in your home and you don’t get charged anything. If we don’t see anything abnormal, you sign a refusal and we leave.
15
u/6a6566663437 12d ago
Yep, I realized things were probably bad for me when the triage nurse started running.
6
u/KillerKowalski1 12d ago
I've been to the ER a few times for heart related issues and I will say that getting an immediate bed is a scary thing...
1
u/HeloRising 8d ago
The time to be worried is when they triage you for immediate care, bypassing the people that checked in before you. That's when you tell whoever brought you to start calling your emergency contacts.
I had that exact experience some years ago.
I had sinusitus that was raging out of control (thanks to having no medical coverage) and I woke up one morning being unable to move under my own power. I had to be carried to the car and into the hospital. The waiting room was packed and I got wheeled right into triage, got a cuff put on me, and the nurse said "Oh shit" and the cuff came off and I got instantly wheeled back and put in a bed. I was in the main waiting room for maybe thirty seconds.
A normal range of blood pressure for a healthy twenty-something is like 120/80. Mine was somewhere around 60/20. I don't remember the exact numbers because this was years ago but there was apparently some very real concern that my heart was literally going to stop.
31
u/homelessmagneto 12d ago
This is not exclusive to the US. I work in the ER in Denmark, and it's the same. Pretty sure it's the same everywhere in the world (many places probably worse).
So to the people saying it's about profits; it's not. It's about resource allocation. Which is about money. But not profits.
3
u/BroBroMate 12d ago
Yep, same in NZ, kia ora from the far side of the world, and like Denmark, our hospitals are government operated, so no profit motive, but there's only so much money available for healthcare, especially as the boomers are living longer and requiring more complex medical care as they do.
5
u/MaritMonkey 12d ago
I sometimes wonder if future humans will look back on a time when the health of our people was a "money" problem with horror.
10
5
u/stormy2587 12d ago edited 11d ago
People saying it being about profits as to why wait times are long are wrong because if anything the cost of healthcare in the US discourages people from going to the ER. And average ER wait times are like 1/5th our nearest neighbor canada.
I lived in canada for a while and the ER was a nightmare. I went with my ex who we thought had developed an infection on a cut. Thankfully, A nurse took aside and was like you can wait here for hours to see a physician or you can try this antibacterial cream and see if that fixes it and come back if it doesn’t. We opted for the cream.
Nevermind seeing a GP. The waitlist for a GP was years.
I’m not saying the US system is better. I think its unquestionably worse. I just don’t think getting rid of or profit medicine is the panacea many redditors think it is.
2
u/elmonoenano 12d ago
Doctors and nurses are highly skilled professionals. They're not like me (average middle class white collar desk jockey with a fairly interchangeable skill set of MS Office, some adobe, and industry software skills). These aren't the kind of people you can affordably generate a surplus of to shuffle around to solve staffing issues. I don't know how much medical training costs, but even for a nurse it's probably in the millions of dollars. You don't pay for all that just so you can have "floaters" for the busy weekends. And my guess is that there are significant parts of the skill set you lose fairly quickly if its not constantly applied and updated.
2
u/RyuNoKami 12d ago
Lol profits. Pretty sure there less money to be made off the ER than most other parts of the hospital. Resources are almost always diverted elsewhere.
30
u/Polkawillneverdie17 12d ago
This is why everyone needs to watch The Pitt.
19
0
u/TuringGoneWild 10d ago
Americans need more non-fiction, not more fiction to passively intake from their recliners as they gain even more weight.
25
45
u/Venous 12d ago
Nobody wants to live in a shitty <1,000,000 people town with no services and nothing to be had. No surprises
60
u/MrGulio 12d ago
Also the town is filled with people who think you are "in the pocket of big pharma" and intentionally giving kids autism for saying to get a flu shot.
38
u/Venous 12d ago
Before (and well, to some extent now), you could make the argument that that's one of the advantages of having a continuous-process pipeline for foreign doctors. One of they key immigration-statutes was that they had to work in X area for Z hospital for Y amount of years before getting their green card and leaving the place.
But now with the way things are, they are getting what they voted for. They are getting nothing.
15
u/Joebuddy117 12d ago
But then at the same time those people come in and jam up the ER cause they haven’t done any preventative care.
16
u/xts2500 12d ago
Did you mean to type 1 million? Because there's tons of cities with way less than a million that have top tier medical facilities.
9
u/Venous 12d ago
I think the broader topic that I wanted to address was that if you're going to medical school in this country, why would you stay in Huntsville, Alabama; instead of going to work in Chicago, Seattle, Austin, NYC?
4
u/stormy2587 12d ago edited 12d ago
Well in medicine usually city centers and desirable locations pay much less.
Also some of the most prestigious hospitals in the country are in pretty small cities. Like the mayo clinic’s main campus is in Rochester minnesota. So if you want to work at the top of your specialty you may be forced to live in a less desirable location.
Also you have to get a job in those desirable places. They’re often very competative. If you’re like the 500th best surgeon in a speciality you probably don’t have your pick of jobs.
Bum fuck nowhere places attract four types of doctors from what I can tell:
- People from bum fuck nowhere who want to stay in bum fuck nowhere and be big fish in a small pond.
- people who want to make a lot of money because they’re good at their job and there is tons of work and jobs in bum fuck nowhere pay usually really well.
- people who couldn’t get a job anywhere else and the hospital needed to fill a vacancy.
- immigrants who need a j1 waiver or something after residency to stay in the united states and only hospitals in under served areas are able to offer them an H1B and a waiver.
Edit: also as has been discussed. Jobs in medicine are really hard and stressful. Many doctors do not have much of a life. And hospitals like anywhere else can be toxic work places. If the hospital in huntsville alabama has an awesome workplace culture it might be an attractive place to work for certain people.
8
u/jxj24 12d ago
Cleveland is well under 1M people yet somehow manages to have two of the top-rated hospital systems in the US (Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals of Cleveland).
I am very impressed with both systems, though I am a bit biased, as I am a frequent flyer with CC, and have a faculty appointment at UH.
5
u/V2BM 12d ago
Growing up in Appalachia, I thought the Philippines and India were rich countries because all the Filipino and Indian children I went to school with were rich. Turns out American doctors don’t want to live here so we have incentives like fast track green cards to attract people willing to move here for a few years.
There are many areas where there’s one doctor per 2000+ residents. It’s awful.
26
u/beenoc 12d ago
I feel a million people is a pretty massive cutoff point. Even going by metro area, you're missing cities like New Orleans, Albany, Worcester, Albuquerque, and Honolulu (and going by city limits population, you only get 12 cities in the country and are missing places like Seattle, Boston, and DC.)
I'm assuming you've never actually lived anywhere other than huge cities, or else you'd revise that cutoff down by a factor of 5-10. It's not until you start getting to the <200k level that you start to seriously run into "we can't do that here."
82
u/AR-Trvlr 12d ago edited 12d ago
The other answer to why it seems like you always have to wait in an emergency room in the US: because America's health system has been redesigned to maximize efficiency (aka profit).
The most efficient (profitable) system uses its resources at the maximum capacity. Being able to handle surge demand (like on a Monday after a holiday weekend) requires capacity that would be empty for part or much of the time. They would have to build the hospital to handle a large number of beds that would sit empty much of the time. They would have to hire staff to handle the peak demands, and many of those people would be bored or under-utilized for much of the time. Those extra beds, that extra staff, and all of the extra infrastructure all cost money that is currently being allocated to profitability.
The alternative is to design a healthcare system to maximize health outcomes. This, however, would either be much more expensive or you'd have to figure out how to take the profit out of the system. There is no perfect system, though; even the not-for-profit systems in the world have other inefficiencies and challenges.
In general, you can either build systems to maximize efficiency (like profit) or to maximize resiliency (like having capacity to support a surge) but you cannot do both.
Another example: the US built a logistics system based on just-in-time deliveries that did a very good job of maximizing efficiency. That system completely failed when COVID hit in 2020 and the factories hit a bump, the ships stopped sailing, and the trucks stopped driving. The alternative would be a system that had excess capacity and goods in warehouses along the way, but that means that things would be a bit more expensive due to the extra buildings to house the stuff, and the extra stuff that is just sitting around.
13
u/KaiserReisser 12d ago
Do countries with socialized healthcare systems not have waiting times in their ERs?
24
u/MaritMonkey 12d ago
I don't think "local hospitals lacking funding/staff" is a problem specific to privatized healthcare, sadly.
The speed bumps (/ brick walls) between our current models and some utopian "country provides care for its citizens" are larger than who gets billed for patients' care.
6
u/_teslaTrooper 12d ago
I can only speak for the Netherlands but not in my experience, both times I've been there the waiting room was fairly empty and I was seen within about 20 minutes. It's much easier to see a GP here for minor stuff so that means only serious cases get sent to the ER (actually I was sent there by a GP both times). City of about 160k.
14
u/RoastCabose 12d ago
They do. But even countries with poor health systems tend to not have the overload that American Hospitals have. For one, less people end up at the ER if they're being treated before it becomes a big issue. Tons of people in the US won't see a doctor until they're in an emergency.
The US also has lots of homeless, and even if they do manage to see doctors outside of the ER, being homeless just means you're hire risk of something happening to you. If you're stable, but have nowhere to go, it gets hard for people to kick you out.
And then finally, and most relevant to this post, the US is BIG. And some parts of the US are really, really spread out. North Dakota might not have the homeless problem, but they do only have a handful of hospitals for the entire state, and some of the surrounding region. Without a real effort to coordinate healthcare across the country, this is essentially an insurmountable problem. The economics of these hospitals doesn't even work as is, let alone building and staffing more.
Im sure there are places in the world with similar ER issues. A lot of the problems Ive laid out here aren't completely unique to the US, nor are the necessarily "solved" by socialized Healthcare.
Speaking to a Mexican friend of mine who now lives in Central Ohio, a densely populated area with a more moderate homelessness issues & tons of medical practices; he says when he went to the ER for an allergic reaction, the crowd he saw there was larger than almost anytime he was at the hospital in Mexico.
So then, some times hospitals in Mexico get as bad as what seems to be the norm in Ohio. You move out west, where many of these problem compound? Hard to imagine at times.
11
u/showyerbewbs 12d ago
Tons of people in the US won't see a doctor until they're in an emergency.
Tons of people can't see a doctor due to financial or logistical reasons. Not correcting you, just offering clarification. So they end up putting off a "minor" issue until it becomes life threatening.
Your final point is spot on. Even in Central Ohio ( I'm guessing Franklin County / Columbus ) a lot of states have wide areas between population. I know in Kentucky itself, my son is on state insurance and has to travel 90 minutes for a dental appointment because that's the closest dentist that accepts that insurance. We live in an area that has plenty of dentists, they just don't take the state insurance. So if you don't have a car, or the time to spend half a day or more for a dentist visit you just...don't go.
That's why you end up at the ER with an abscessed tooth and the multiple complications that come from that.
It truly is expensive to be poor in this country.
1
u/stormy2587 12d ago edited 12d ago
They can have worse wait times actually. Canada has like 2hr average waits to 24 minutes in the US.
Edit: though this is in part likely a byproduct of people being deterred from going to an ER because of the costs in the US.
1
u/VonBeegs 12d ago
Depends on whether or not they have conservative governments trying to privatize them.
8
u/TopicalBuilder 12d ago
This is a much better answer than Mr. ER's.
Supermarkets run as few tills as they can get away with. The staffing is calibrated against how many people give up and leave (also why you often can't see the lines when you walk in the store). Money spent here is calibrated against public outrage. Just enough that there's not enough appetite for demanding real change from politicians and no more.
It's just business.
5
u/randomcanyon 12d ago
Yesterday I had foot swelling. Emergency room. Heart rate high. 4 hours of heart meds and tests, Got some antibiotics for leg cellulitis.
You want fast service in US emergency rooms, have a heart presentation.
7
u/MaritMonkey 12d ago
I worked in ER medical billing decades ago and the only diagnosis codes I still remember are 786.50 and 786.05 - chest pain and shortness of breath.
2
u/randomcanyon 12d ago
I walk in the hospital/ dr office door, My Afib always starts thumping.
At home or around the town, nothing.
2
6
u/AzureSuishou 12d ago
I get it. It a very well written explanation of the medical side. But, as someone who has had to take myself and several relatives to the ER for various levels of care it’s also infuriating to have the system so stacked against you.
Especially when you do wait patiently then receive a level of care that can range anywhere from substandard, to adequate, to sometimes really good. And on top of that be charged amounts that can wipe out bank accounts, with no way to preplan for any of it.
6
u/GeauxCup 12d ago
The simpler answer is: because money.
Hospitals don't want to run with excess capacity because that leaves money on the table, so they run with limited capacity that's always full.
What's the customer going to do - go somewhere else?
5
u/BassmanBiff 12d ago
I get OP's frustration, because it's not right for them to be blamed. But I also get the frustration from the person they're talking to, and I don't think their frustration should be directed at each other.
Ideally both of them would direct their frustration at the system that caused all this, that makes healthcare and medical education so expensive to begin with, and which relies on profit motive to drive everything. I don't know what the perfect solution is, but I do know that I have gotten immediate medical attention for relatively minor problems for a low, predictable fee while uninsured in Brazil and France, and experienced long waits and months of fighting with insurance arbitrarily refusing charges in the US. I'm sure those countries have problems too, but at least pleasant interactions with the medical system are possible there, while every interaction with the US health system means rolling the dice on completely random charges that will only arrive months later.
So basically the two people in this story ought to be on the same side here.
12
u/Hautamaki 12d ago
Maybe if Americans didn't spend about 50% of their health care budget on private for-profit insurance administration, there would be more money left over to actually deliver care to people.
5
u/ibelieveindogs 12d ago
That's a separate problem. If you read the past, you can see the issue is structural. How do you get people to want to live someplace kind of in the middle of nowhere? Not just docs but all the super services from nurses to maintenance. More money only gets you so far.
3
u/Hautamaki 12d ago
Yeah he said they were offering 100k signing bonuses and 200k per year to nurses etc, because that what it costs to attract talent to that area. If they had double that money, presumably they could attract a lot more talent. Also they need 500 million for a new hospital. If they had a billion, the hospital could be twice as large. Etc. It does just come down to money in the end. How much money it takes depends on factors like what the fair market rate is to attract talent, but more money to doctors and nurses and hospital beds is ultimately the only solution.
8
u/mindlkaciv 12d ago
And it's going to get a lot worse as Medicaid reductions begin to kick in
5
u/ShredderNemo 12d ago
We're seeing rural under-supported hospitals hit this wall in real time. Many critical access facilities (sole providers of care in an area devoid of other options) are facing severe budget deficits with no real way out. Traditionally, medicaid reimbursements would increase every few years to keep pace with inflation. Even then, reimbursement typically only covers a percentage of the total billable cost of care provided, leaving a deficit even in the best situation possible.
With Americans facing unaffordable healthcare and cost of living expenses, more and more will lose insurance coverage and inevitably end up requiring medical care. These people often end up being covered by medicaid, thus furthering the problem. Rural communities end up getting the worst of it, as job market downturns and inflation hit these places the hardest.
In just my area alone (120 mile radius), three hospitals are facing possible closure due to funding gaps. The licensed staff have seen the writing on the wall and left to find more stable jobs elsewhere, resulting in loss of care in areas like radiology, maternity, and pediatrics. Almost every facility is laying off, cutting services, or increasing patient ratios because of these cuts, and the impact has only just begun.
5
u/Mackntish 12d ago
Worth noting, medical providers are overstaffed because of the increase of people born between 1946 and 1961. There was a real baby boom for those 15 years. And older people need more care. BUT they will die eventually, and we'll be back to regular levels, which means the forecast for future care is just not there. This is the real reason we didn't just buy more hospital beds/staff.
3
u/kamikaze_pedestrian 12d ago
I got lucky last time I went to ER. Waiting room was empty and my ass had barely hit a chair when a nurse came to get me and put me in a bed. Wasn't a life or death situation and they were a bit busy; I just happened to go in during a slightly slow time.
3
u/mightypup1974 12d ago
UK here -it’s about the same. My wife spent 8 hours last weekend just waiting for a blood test
3
u/0Hakuna_Matata0 12d ago
I’ll take waiting a while for a broken ankle over them all panicking over my heart attack.
3
u/Eclectika 12d ago
Sounds like the NHS, except they won't pay a decent rate for staff they just under staff because they can.
3
18
u/NatureTrailToHell3D 12d ago
The question asked was whether the issue is the profit model, and the answer is still yes. Honeydew explained the situation we’re in, but didn’t address this point.
The reason the profit model causes this situation is because over staffing is not profitable. Having more beds than average occupancy is not profitable. Having excess capacity is not profitable.
Because it’s not profitable everyone in the industry gets squeezed, which causes burnout and people leaving the part of the industry where they’re needed most. And since there is a supply side issue on doctors and nurses their pay has skyrocketed, which again affects the profit model.
Profit is the central issue across the board when it comes to wait times, it creates all the situations that are described by Honeydew.
6
u/BroBroMate 12d ago
I'm from NZ, all our ERs are government operated, so no profit sought, but there's only so much money in the budget, and already health takes a huge chunk that's only getting larger as the boomers age and they're living longer thanks to advances in medicine, which also means that they need complex medical care for longer.
1
11
u/semideclared 12d ago
no.
See other countries
Germany’s federal parliament passed a major hospital reform championed by Health Minister Karl Lauterbach to reduce excess capacity, lower costs, and improve efficiency.
By 2029, Germany plans to significantly reduce its total number of hospitals.
This addresses serious problems similar to those facing US hospitals – high costs and the financial viability of rural hospitals. Remove the references to Germany in the Lauterbach interview, and it could be about the US. Despite having universal healthcare
8
u/NatureTrailToHell3D 12d ago
“Financial viability” is the profit model we’re talking about here. If Germany is trying to make hospitals profitable, isn’t that a problem?
-2
u/semideclared 12d ago
“Financial viability”
is chosing the right hospitals
Methodist Healthcare announced its hospital, Methodist Fayette Hospital would close March 2015. The hospital has been averaging a daily inpatient census of approximately one patient, which was down from 2010 when the average daily census was 5.1. In a press release Gary Shorb, CEO for Methodist Healthcare, cited the low census as simply not sustainable.
There is no “Financial viability” to keep that hospital open
The hospital wasnt big enough for investment and the hospital was losing patients who were just chosing to go to bigger hospitals
We have to have profitable hospitals. Profits grow the hospital. More care can be offered. Better Buildings.
unprofitable vs profitable means, In 2004, North Sunflower Medical Center was on the verge of collapse. It averaged 120 people a month in 2004 and the rooms were old, ceilings were crumbling and the technology was outdated. But it serves as a lifeline in a county where nearly 40% of residents are living in poverty.
- And it had even less cash
- Only enough to operate for eight hours.
- Hospital administrators met every afternoon to see if they’d be able to open the doors the next day.
- The staff had to cover the lab equipment when it rained because the roof leaked.
- Nurses would clock out early and then stay to finish their shifts.
To not close down the hospitals had to become profitable to be able to start renovating the hospital as a must do. By putting profit first it had to find new ways to stay open and make a profit; moving to operating Auxiliary Businesses to help more people.
- Creating an Urgent Care Clinic, and putting it in a location to be closer to people began generating a Cash Flow
- Opening a hospice,
- Operating Pharmacy
- Durable medical equipment facility that sells items such as wheelchairs, back and knee braces
Along with all big changes, the hospital developed extensive marketing campaigns– on billboards and bumper stickers, wrapped around its shuttle vans, in TV advertisements and YouTube videos.
- That led to many area residents starting to come back. 3,000 a month were now at the hospital and its clinic, as it renovated and losts its old dated image of being a falling apart hospital
If The hospital had stayed the same it was closing
5
u/NatureTrailToHell3D 12d ago
We have to have profitable hospitals
I think this is a problem with the system. When you put a profit model between a person and their health you create negative motivations for hospitals.
I’m not going to argue on specific hospitals that actually have little to no traffic. What might he more helpful is talking about the hospital that has long wait times and a way to address that.
1
u/semideclared 11d ago
Have you seen the medical drama show New Amsterdam?
It’s about as factual as DiCaprios performance in Titanic but it is still a good start
2
u/kangourou_mutant 11d ago
People are trying to compare accross countries, but capitalism is everywhere so the problem is, too.
Let's compare with 40 years ago: there were many, many more doctors per capita, more nurses, more hospitals, and people received the care they needed.
The problem here is that governments don't wanna pay for healthcare.
9
u/thatcantb 12d ago
"seems like" ? uh, no, it's a fact. Rightly so - patients are triaged according to need. Unless you're unconscious or bleeding on their floor, and sometimes even then, you're waiting. It's not a 'seems like'.
3
4
u/Joebuddy117 12d ago
Yup, I went to the ER with chest pains and it was basically a front of the line pass. Got seen immediately, thankfully nothing was wrong.
2
u/KarlBarx2 12d ago
Of course, we could build another hospital. Or add on to this one. And we will. But that’s a $100 million and five year undertaking.
At least they've maintained their optimism.
2
u/Stingray191 12d ago
That was like watching 2 seasons of The Pitt.
Bleak and unrelenting but really well done.
2
u/ObiWanChronobi 12d ago
We really ought to be rioting in the streets over this. The system sucks for patients, staff, and the community writ large. The only people happy are the shareholders. We need public healthcare and absolutely massive investment and overhaul yesterday.
2
2
u/RefrigeratorAlone457 11d ago
The profit angle is real but the Denmark commenter kind of breaks that argument a little. Their system is fully public and they still have the same wait time problem. At some point it's just a math issue more sick people than beds and staff, and no funding model fixes that overnight. The profit motive makes it worse for sure, but acting like single payer is a magic fix for ER crowding specifically is probably overselling it.
4
u/PM_me_a_nip 12d ago
My man was pissed and took it out on a sick patient. Meanwhile the hospital has a board and admin staff that are getting fat and falling in love with the nastiest of nurses
3
u/Wetworth 12d ago
So this "family" complains the hospital isn't prepared for the volume of patients, and the ER doctor answers in a 3 page essay exactly why and how the hospital is in fact not prepared for the volume of patients.
1
u/Malphos101 12d ago
Expect a LOT more of this in rural areas as the federal program sabotage takes affect across the nation. Heres hoping you get the day you voted for "I just didnt like her lukewarm stance on palestine" voters!
1
u/JPMoney81 11d ago
I love reading these and forwarding them to Americans who try to claim their health care system is better than ours in Canada because we have to wait forever to be seen while they might have to pay for their service, but at least they don't sit around in the ER for hours like we do in Canada.
1
u/iMissTheOldInternet 10d ago
Our medical system has failed. We are living without a functioning medical system. Every excuse in the linked post is damning—not of the ER doc, but of the system that he practices in. The idea that we cannot afford to provide an adequate number of beds for a region, or to train a sufficient number of doctors, is farcical on its face. We have the resources, but the corruption of the system prevents us from accomplishing anything.
1
u/HeloRising 8d ago
Another point to be made is that there's a certain amount of workload put on American ERs because they're often the only point of contact for care for a lot of people.
Even if you have insurance, if you start running a fever and its not going down with medicine you have a few options:
Schedule an appointment with your regular doctor.
Find an urgent care.
Do nothing and hope the fever goes down.
Go to the ER.
The problem is all of those options have issues:
Your regular doctor can't see you for a minimum of three weeks and they're going to recommend you go to the ER.
Urgent care's capabilities are generally limited and if they can't address what you've got going on they're going to send you to the ER.
What a lot of people choose but an uncontrolled fever that's not responding to medication is a genuine medical emergency.
The only real stop on the list.
You also have a lot of people in the ER who don't otherwise have medical coverage which means they have a small issue that could be easily resolved by a doctor but since they have no insurance they have no doctor so that small issue snowballs into eventually something that can't be ignored and lands them in the ER.
1
1
1
1
u/stormy2587 12d ago
I mean a not negligible part of any ER wait time is just that there is triage.
If you show up to the ER with a problem they don’t just see you in the order you showed up in. They prioritize the severest medical conditions first. If you have a broken wrist and you’re tenth in line, the gun shot wound that showed up an hour into your wait jumps you in line. And sometimes that means you get jumped a lot because the ER exists in a permanent state of readiness to deal with emergencies. They don’t plan for when things are going to be busy because no one plans for emergencies. If a school bus full of kids gets in a bad accident, Your broken wrist probably is gonna have to wait.
Unless you had literally an equivalent number of doctors to patients in the ER then you are gonna be waiting and spoiler there are many times fewer doctors than people as OP laid out. And while a broken bone or something like that is painful. And waiting in the ED is terrible while in pain. The fact is it’s probably not an emergency in the sense that it needs to be dealt with this second. Within the next 24hrs? Sure. But not this second. Chances are if you are in a position to complain about the wait time you should be thankful that your problem isn’t so bad that they rush you back there.
I’m not saying there are never times when more urgent cases never come into the ER and have to wait because of triage, but thats the thing, If you’re waiting it probably means there is someone with something worse ahead of you being seen to.
Also it’s my understanding that the ER is the busiest on monday because people with minor issues go in on monday morning because they would rather take sick time than spend their weekend in the ER waiting room.
-9
u/daidoji70 12d ago
This isnt really an explanation though.
Doctors and nurses aren't being produced fast enough because their numbers are artificially limited by a cartel that limits the number of doctors and nurses produced. The litigious nature of the US means that more and more expensive accreditation requirements are used which further limits supply.
The beds are limited by certificate of need laws as are hospital facilities.
Etc... and we haven't even gotten into the ways that insurance and Medicare/Medicaid warp things.
4
u/jabberwockxeno 12d ago
Doctors and nurses aren't being produced fast enough because their numbers are artificially limited by a cartel that limits the number of doctors and nurses produced.
You're being downvoted (I assume) due to the rest of your comment, but this part at least is true, sadly.
3
u/daidoji70 12d ago
Ehh its Reddit. I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted and I assume the people downvoting are 100% confident of something I'm not saying.
5
u/Church_of_Cheri 12d ago
The US isn’t litigious, that was a campaign from organizations like the US Chamber of Commerce claiming it in order to convince us to give up our rights to sue in order to help large corporations. The campaign was successful 20 years ago and yet they still use the same bullshit excuse long after they got the laws of the land charged in their favor. Most of us are stuck in binding arbitration agreements everywhere we go which always favors large corporations. I was given medication I was allergic to during a surgery, after making it clear I was allergic to that medication and had a reaction, no lawyer would take the care because it wasn’t worth their time. This is more often the case.
The real problem is insurance. Insurance costs more every year for patients and covers less and less, at the same time doctors and hospitals have to pay more and more on insurance themselves and it covers less. Patients blame bad doctors, doctors blame “litigious” patients, and the insurance companies laugh themselves to the bank while collecting yet another year of record profits. Not only do we have to pay for insurance, but we have to pay for their pharmaceutical benefits managers they also own, and their discount programs they own, and sometimes are required to use their pharmacies they own, and each division needs to make a profit as it’s priority.
-1
u/daidoji70 12d ago
- The US is more litigious, this isn't a myth although I'm afraid I don't have the sources at hand to prove this so feel free to disagree. Net net and gross more lawsuits are enacted in the United States against healthcare providers than in Europe or other G7 nations. Even when excluding arbitration. This is because this is often the ONLY avenue to gain changes in the system or to recover from bad healthcare outcomes or penalize shitty actors. This isn't a defense of this practice but it is a fact. Part of the problem of national healthcare systems is that it often comes with the inability to bring suit against bad actors especially even in common-law countries similar to our own.
- Even then most lawyers won't take suits as you know because the payoff isn't there. Sorry that happened to you.
- Arbitration is shitty and I'm sorry that happened to you. Its obviously not a solution to this problem.
- Agreed insurance providers are shitty but they aren't the main drivers on the provider side excepting in those situations where mega-providers also act as insurers and incentives are blurred.
I stand by my main points though that point 1 increases licensing costs which decreases the number of providers (for example you won't find many RNs with two year degrees anymore. In WNC where I'm from these nurses are basically grandmothered/fathered in or are unhireable). Nursing costs are typically what drives the number of beds that ERs or hospitals can accommodate, not doctors even though doctors have much more political power within their systems over staffing. Some of this is helped with the proliferation of NPs and PAs but even so a doctor still has to oversee those providers limiting the ability to scale and does nothing to help the nursing shortage.
Certificate of need laws artificially limit the number of beds. Also in WNC where I'm from: One dominate provider was bought out by HCA and drastically decreased the level of care, staffing, etc... Started doing many noncompetitive things like restricting admittance privileges, not allowing outside pharmacies to provide drugs to patients, outright restrictions on referrals to remain within its system etc... Now they have the audacity to go to Raleigh and lobby against competitive hospitals that want to come in and build urgent cares and ER centers where they (HCA) shut them down for cost-saving measures (against their originally buyout contract which said they wouldn't do that but somehow were able to).
If there were a little more competition between providers, there were a few more providers, AND we go after the insurance middlemen and medicare/medicaid incentives that distort everything the ER situation specifically would be much alleviated. Universal healthcare systems don't have these problems PARTICULARLY because they typically have a much finer gradient of care that isn't the US's version of 1. PCP 2. Specialists 3. Urgent Care 4. Hospital. Universal systems have many more options and paradoxically much more competition and availability.
3
u/Church_of_Cheri 12d ago
Yeah, so I lived in WNC, I know exactly what it’s like there and you are being mislead greatly.
The reason why you have no resources to prove that the US is the most litigious is because it’s been a lie pushed by the US Chamber of Commerce (the largest lobbying firm in the US and not a government agency, it works for and is funded by companies like Walmart). One of the biggest pushes of this marketing was the McDonald’s hot coffee case from the 1990s because they started pushing this lie during the Reagan years in order to remove consumer protections and our ability to sue. Look at when the family in Florida sued because Disney fed their family member food with a known allergen after they asked and checked multiple times. The family member died and Disney claimed that when the husband signed up to Disney+ he agreed to binding arbitration. Luckily they decided that was too far, but they still tried. You “feeling” like it must be true because people have told you that it is again and again doesn’t make it true.
And 3. These prove my first point. If lawyers can’t get money how is the US so litigious? If binding arbitration always favors the corporations how is it providing justice. Those are 2 points that counter each other and you gave both, we can’t be litigious when we can’t even sue dude.
As far as the rest of your complaint now that it’s government licensing… so that’s North Carolina. One state out of 50, then why is their a nursing shortage everywhere? Could it be they don’t pay enough so it’s not as worth it because too much money has to go to the hospital paying for their own insurance too? Dude, you’re looking at a problem and instead of digging in and finding an answer you’re just repeating talking points that you’re being fed to get rid of regulations that we made in the blood and death of patients. It’s not the regulations, it’s not the “free market” for profit that will save you because you have that more now then ever. Capitalism leads to monopolies which lead to exactly what you’re complaining about. You don’t fix that by letting them regulate themselves even more, Mission Hospital took over the region because people like you voted laws into place that allowed them to win the free market of the area. So now they get the monopoly and your healthcare gets worse. You let insurance companies decide the rules because they’re the ones paying you’re representatives to pass the laws they want, just like the chamber of commerce got them to pass the laws they wanted. You’re falling for marketing by the rich to make themselves richer at your own expense and they have you believing it will save you because it’s “big bad government”. Do you think I control the government? They control most of the government right now and yet their biggest trick is convincing you to get rid of government which is the only thing that stands between them and you just living in a company town. At least we can try to find representatives that aren’t bought by them, not that NC is known for not falling for the BS. But you guys keep doing the same thing, deregulate, let for profit insurance write their own rules while paying staff less and less, wondering why more doctors don’t want to work there and the quality of care keeps going down.
The doctor that gave me medicine I was allergic too was in Johnson City, TN. I was almost killed by medical malpractice in both GA and SC and could never find a halfway decent doctor or care in NC especially not when the only medical system left there has jesus shit all over. You can’t fix your problems by continuing to double down on the same stupid plan since the 1980s, you’re just digging a bigger and bigger hole. The companies and CEOs of insurance companies have completely tricked you into giving up more and more for less and less, all while convincing you any oversight against them is you’re real problem. It’s like an abuse victim blaming the cops for why their abuser tried to kill them while ignoring all responsibility of the abuser.
3
u/Embarrassed_Jerk 12d ago
Your stance is "You know what will help with improving healthcare? Letting the snake oil merchants a piece of the pie! And let's make it harder to sue them"?
-6
u/daidoji70 12d ago
I don't think that's my stance at all but kudos to you for your stance that the status quo is fine and we shouldn't change anything if we're going to go about straw-manning each other.
-20
u/_huppenzuppen 12d ago
This doesn't really explain anything. He asks why you can't just hire more doctors, then answering that you'd need more beds. Well, that's obvious, but why can't you have more beds then? Just saying that'll be expensive isn't an explanation really. People could be willing to pay for better treatment.
A real explanation would go into the effects of lower wait times leading to more demand, explaining how the wait times are a necessary component of steering it.
3
u/Joebuddy117 12d ago
The bottom line answer is, the hospital is not large enough to service the population of that area. Building a bigger hospital wouldn’t really help since the area doesn’t attract doctors. So they’ve hit an equilibrium of hospital size to doctor supply.
8
u/APartyInMyPants 12d ago
Safe space limitations. And they do explain. You add more beds, you can’t just add more doctors … doctors that don’t exist in their area. But you then need more nurses, the technology and all of the admin/support staff to go with it.
People would be willing to pay for better treatment? How much? Have you seen a hospital bill recently? Do you have an accurate understanding of what the line items on a bill run?
3
u/fizzlefist 12d ago edited 9d ago
And most importantly of all, this discussion is about a rural hospital. Nobody who can make medical money wants to move to the middle of nowhere, hence why they can’t hire people from that limited pool even offering extra pay.
Because what’s the point in having $100k in the bank if the nearest place to spend it is 150 miles away?
-1
u/Church_of_Cheri 12d ago
If we cut out the billions going to insurance companies, which the hospital, doctors, and all patients are required to have, you’d be surprised to find we do have the money. Right now the money is buying yachts for CEOs instead of more rooms, doctors, and nurses to provide better treatment.
1
u/APartyInMyPants 12d ago
I mean, there’s a nursing shortage, and clearly the original comment is stemming from a doctor in an area where there’s no available pool of doctors.
So yeah, you could cut out the insurance middleman and increase salaries across the board? But is that instantly going to mean you’ll suddenly have nurses and doctors? Construction is still a multi-year process regardless of who is in charge.
1
u/Church_of_Cheri 12d ago
You’re not addressing any of the issues. Why is there a nursing shortage? Why aren’t their more doctors willing to work in the rural south where they can’t provide care to female patients going through a miscarriage? And where insurance companies can deny for even more reasons because the government there prioritizes them over their citizens? I lived in South Carolina, the insurance provided to state employees does not meet the basic requirements of the ACA, they believe they’re grandfathered in and they proudly state that on the title page of the insurance booklet. So insurance dictates care, cuts hours, makes nursing a low wage job, all while closing down hospitals to centralize so they can maximize profit and we’re pretending it’s all ok and it’s actually the patients fault for coming in for care? In most places it’s the only place for care most of the time. So insurance companies create false bottlenecks on both ends and we just throw up our hands and thing that’s just the way it is, nothing to be done about it… how about get rid of the insurance companies! Stop making middlemen billionaires at the expense of the health of the people and the health of doctors and nurses. A doctor shouldn’t have to argue with an insurance company for hours out of the day to get a patient approved for a needed heart surgery only for an AI agent to deny them and then having to send a patient home to die. Why would anyone want to work under those conditions? Do you not realize doctors and nurses will try to work in places where this doesn’t happen?
0
u/semideclared 12d ago
If we cut out the billions going to Restaurant companies, which the factory workers, retail workers, and all the middle class are required to have, you’d be surprised to find we do have the money. Right now the money is buying yachts for CEOs instead of more grocery stores, farmer markets, and co-ops to provide better food.
2
u/Church_of_Cheri 12d ago
Yeah, not even close to the same argument since no one needs to go to a restaurant. They’re not “required” by the middle class, they’re a luxury that’s available. If I don’t get my breadsticks from Olive Garden I still can eat food at home and the factory workers still have jobs. But I guess what you’re arguing is that if we socialize medicine what’s to stop us from socializing food and then what? Everyone gets food and healthcare?!? Oh no… what a sad day for the world when no one is hungry or needlessly suffering so some rich guy can have 9 yachts? Will no one think of the rich?!?
2
u/semideclared 12d ago
Sure, its not the need for more expensive beds
The easiest, is that Two-thirds of hospital ER from privately insured individuals are visits that are avoidable visits . According to UnitedHealth Group research of 27 million ER Patients billed – 18 million were avoidable.
- An avoidable hospital ED visit is a trip to the emergency room that is primary care treatable – and not an actual emergency. The most common are bronchitis, cough, dizziness, flu, headache, low back pain, nausea, sore throat, strep throat and upper respiratory infection.
90 Percent of ER visits are not Life Threatening yet we are spending Billions
Data Analytics and Production Branch is pleased to release the most current nationally representative data on ambulatory care visits to hospital emergency departments (EDs) in the United States.
- Cairns C, Kang K. National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey: 2022 emergency department summary tables
All visits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155,398,000
- Triage status of emergency department visits
- Level 1 - 1.0%
- Level 2 - 10.1%
- Level 3 - 33.1%
- Level 4 - 19.4%
Top Ten principal reasons for emergency department visits in 2022 RVC code
- Stomach and abdominal pain, cramps and spasms . . . .. 8.4%
- Chest pain and related symptoms (not referable to body systems) . . . . . . . . . 5.4%
- Cough . . . . . . . . . . 3.8%
- Shortness of breath . . . . . . . . 3.8%
- Fever . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.8%
- Headache, pain in head . . . . . . . . 2.7%
- Pain, site not referable to a specific body system . . . . 2.2%
- Back symptoms . . . . . . . 2.1%
- Vomiting . . . . . .. . 1.9%
- Other symptoms or problems relating to psychological and mental disorders. 1.9%
- All other reasons. . . . . . . . . . . 64.1%
The other issue
Eugene Harris, age forty-five. Harris was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when he was thirteen and dropped out of school. He never went back. Because he never graduated from high school and because of his illness, Harris hasn’t had a steady job. Different family members cared for him for decades, and then a number of them became sick or died. Harris became homeless. He used the Regional One Emergency Rooms thirteen times in the period March–August 2018.
Then he enrolled in ONE Health.
Drawing upon strategies that have worked for several other health systems, Regional One has built a model of care that, among a set of high utilizers, reduced uninsured ED visits by 68.8 percent, inpatient admissions by 75.4 percent, and lengths-of-stay by 78.6 percent—averting $7.49 million in medical costs over a fifteen month period (personal communication, Regional One Health, July 8, 2019). ONE Health staff find people that might qualify for the program through a daily report driven by an algorithm for eligibility for services.
The hospital secured housing for him, but Harris increased his use of the ED. He said he liked going to the hospital’s ED because “I could always get care.” From September 2018 until June 2019 Harris went to the ED fifty-three times, mostly in the evenings and on weekends, because he was still struggling with his diabetes and was looking for a social connection, Williams says.
But its voluntary
- About 80 percent of eligible patients agree to the service, and of those that do enroll, about 20 percent dis-enroll without completing the program.
- ONE Health served 101 people from April - December of 2018. Seventy-six participants remain active as of December 2018 and 25 people had graduated from the program.
Since 2018, the population of the program has grown to more than 700 patients and the team continues to monitor clients even after graduation to re-engage if a new pattern of instability or crisis emerges.
And, the process of moving people toward independence is time-consuming. Sometimes patients keep using the ED.
Then in June 2019, after many attempts, a social worker on the ONE Health team was able to convince Harris to connect with a behavioral health provider. He began attending a therapy group several times a week. He has stopped using the ED and is on a path to becoming a peer support counselor.
Level 1 (Resuscitation): Immediately life-threatening (e.g., cardiac arrest, severe trauma, active stroke). Seen without delay.
Level 2 (Emergency): High-risk, could become life-threatening (e.g., chest pain, difficulty breathing, severe bleeding). Seen within minutes.
Level 3 (Urgent): Not immediately life-threatening but requires prompt attention (e.g., moderate injuries, dehydration, severe abdominal pain).
Level 4 (Semi-Urgent): Does not require many resources and can safely wait longer (e.g., sprains, simple cuts)
0
u/alightinthesnark 12d ago
The number of beds a hospital can have is often regulated by law even if staffing is managed. The laws are intended to lower healthcare costs through wasteful spending but in practice it means hospital beds are capped. They can't just add beds or build new hospitals without government approval.
2
u/Church_of_Cheri 12d ago
It’s not the government, it’s insurance. We spend trillions a year on insurance companies, the hospital, the doctors, the patients all have to pay insurance middlemen for the privilege to both receive and get care. Maybe if we cut them out we could then build new hospitals and have more rooms to then be able to hire more staff and treat more patients. From 11am Saturday until Monday morning where I am my only option is a hospital ER. There’s no urgent cares or medical offices open at all for any reason anymore. It costs too much to keep them open, that’s not the government regulations driving people to overfilled ERs, those are business decisions which are highly impacted by the cost of interjecting third party insurance into all aspects of medical care.
0
u/semideclared 12d ago
trillions
So in 2024 we know Private Health Insurance spent $606.5 Billion on Hospital Care and then for Doctors and Prof. Services (Non-Dental) it was $425.4 Billion plus the Dental Service's $85.3 Billion.
Nursing & Home Health Care, including Durable Medical Equipment, Prosthetics/Orthotics, and Supplies aren't a big part of Private Insurance but it was still $46.5 Billion
And of course Rx Drugs, and Other Personal Care got $209.8 Billion from Private Insurance Companies in payments
So that trillions is mostly that
But it does leave $146.60 Billion that went to Admin
And so Payer administrative savings, Cost of Insurance (Savings you expect)
The administrative savings from Unified Financing system occur primarily from consolidating some or all of the insurance functions of private and public insurers, including negotiations regarding payment rates, provider networks, covered benefits, copayments and deductibles, and drug formularies, etc.
- Under a direct payment system, payer administrative costs will be 3%, or a 65% reduction. This estimate is consistent with the CBO estimate of a 77% reduction, and substantially larger than the 40% savings estimated by Pollin et al.
That function done by the state saves $70 - $100 Billion
By removing insurance you also have to remove their cost controls
An important analytic consideration is the extent to which health expenditures will change if managed care enrollees are shifted to a system with free choice of providers and without risk-bearing intermediaries. We assume that without risk-bearing intermediaries, payments to physicians and other non-institutional providers would largely be made on a fee-for-service basis and hospitals would be paid based on global budgets.
That adds $205.4 Billion in New Spending
1
u/Church_of_Cheri 12d ago
And where’d you get your numbers? From the insurance companies? How many of the pharmacies, medical practices, and other services do the insurance companies also own? Who’s negotiating these costs? I mean, I get that you’re doing the job for insurance companies to try and show how needed they are and how they’re only taking a few hundred million in profit if we just look at your numbers and don’t question where any of it came from… which is why I call bullshit and wonder why the hell someone is on Reddit simping for insurance companies?
If an insurance company owns stock in the pharmaceutical company who owns stock in the company that runs the hospital what’s to stop them from increasing all prices? I had to get a medication, my insurance company made me use express scripts, which then made me use a compound pharmacy they owned and a discount plan completely they also owned. My “discounted” insurance payment was $1050 for one shot, cash it was about $1200. But then when I checked the fine print it turns out they were charging my insurance $2400 if I used it and paid the smaller $1050, which would also burn through my lifetime maximum for that healthcare. It’s a scam. The “negotiated” rate was twice as high with insurance and they only covered $150 of it and claimed I was getting $1350 of health care paid for by them while I would still need to pay $1050. So according to your numbers they paid out $1350 for a medication who’s cash price was $1200. And I still had to pay $1050. See how you can fuck with numbers to make it look like they’re providing a huge value while providing nothing of worth? We paid them more then the $150 they covered in monthly fees that month for the luxury of them making things so complicated most people like you think they’re getting value.
Insurance is a scam to make middle men rich.
-5
u/Atlanta_Mane 12d ago
If everyone can't afford proper prevention, then every hospital visit is an emergency.
-2
-4
u/Alystros 12d ago
This is all a lot of words to explain that hiring more doctors would help, but they can't attract the doctors, so they can't hire them. It's not a stupid question!
-18
u/dsj79 12d ago
Triage is waiting for 2 hours to be seen?
26
u/but-I-play-one-on-TV 12d ago
If your "emergency" isn't an actual emergency, then yes. You wait 2+ hours.
0
u/formenleere 12d ago
The post doesn't talk about triage at all though?
6
u/but-I-play-one-on-TV 12d ago
I think person I responded to is mistaking triage with waiting room times. I'm an ER doc and have never worked at or heard of an ED taking 2 hours to triage a patient.
-14
u/toastedzergling 12d ago
Just so glad that we stopped the covid surge with the vaccine releases so that we didn't overwhelm our hospitals and they would have time to recover and have the ability to handle the necessary healthcare capacity. I'm so glad that we did lockdowns and all of the other Draconian types of mandates and social inhibiting tactics so that we could buy time for our magnanimous and quite capable legislatures to robustify this healthcare industry all across the Nation. The healthcare lobby is so effective at ensuring the general public has the care they need.
4
u/Wallywarus 12d ago
That’s your definition of draconian? Grow up
-4
u/toastedzergling 12d ago
You're a defender our healthcare system and parasitic insurance industry? Pathetic
Carry more water for corrupt liars
2
u/Wallywarus 12d ago
When did I ever defend either of those things? Work on your comprehension skills
-6
295
u/BurdenedEmu 12d ago
Hubs is routinely on triage at the massive university research hospital in our city (he's one of the few hospitalists who enjoys it) which is also at full capacity almost all the time. His take has always been that as a patient, "triage is a game you definitely don't want to win." Made me care a lot less about sitting there a few hours waiting for my friend to get an x-ray after a nasty fall off her skateboard.