| Thats certainly true, but not always so. There's a strata of use cases that left in limbo in your argument. Im a basketball player. I may have a microtear of a ligament from a 9pm game. The ortho guy, the pain doc, the sports med and my pcp are closed at 9pm. I have no options but to go to the ER. I know because I've been there. Multiple times. My kid is breathing and I can see his ribcage from forced breathing? If its past 5pm, its definitely an ER trip. I pierced my hip with a chain link fence and need irrigation for the wound? ER trip None of these injuries are life threatening.
I'm not poor. My time is super valuable. i charge some clients $700/hour. Yet in each case, I spent > 4 hours in ER ! Now- I will literally wake up MD friends and ask them to write me a script to the 24hr pharmacy instead of waiting in ER for meds. |
Everything you've written is correct. I was not trying to argue anything and I think I hedged my words above quite carefully. I was mainly trying to answer OP's question and in passing explain a few things that make it look to patients like me that the ER is even more messed up than it actually is. (And it is actually pretty messed up!)
I love the people with microtears who can't get into the office. I love reassuring parents that they don't need to spend $10k for their viral toddler to be admitted and get treated with nothing all day and then get discharged, but slowly and passive-aggressively. I love helping people who are in the ER for legitimate reasons. I understand that the medical system is broken and most people who are in the ER should, in a halfway sane system, not be in the ER. I understand that way too many people wait for way too long in the ER and it makes me real sad, because as I've written elsewhere on this thread, I do think there are usually fixes that are possible and even easy, from my POV as both geek and JAFERD.
Telemedicine does offer some solutions to some of these problems, but not all of them by any means.