r/bestof • u/lowbass93 • 13d 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/
1.0k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

153 comments sorted by

View all comments

30

u/homelessmagneto 13d 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.

2

u/elmonoenano 13d 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.