Can You Really Afford A Trip To The Emergency Room?
It's Sunday morning and you have a splitting headache. Your family medicine doctor, such as Better Family Care Practice, is not available until Monday morning. A hospital emergency room is just a few blocks away. It's tempting to stroll down to the emergency room and see what they have to say about your headache. If you really knew what goes on in an emergency room, however, you might decide to wait to see your doctor the next day.
Emergency Room Staff Have to Move Quickly
The people that work in an emergency room are trained to be expert observers so they can determine how serious a person's medical problems are. Remember that they have people coming to them in ambulances from accidents, in wheelchairs brought in by family members, with some people managing to stagger themselves in. With each person, the staff have to quickly evaluate who needs the help soonest. Your headache may be at the bottom of the list of medical problems currently waiting to be seen in the ER.
Emergency Room Staff Can Become Overworked Quickly
Your don't know what kind of day the staff has had as you walk into an emergency room. Life in an ER often consists of hours of boredom with periodic moments of excitement. Some urban city ERs are constantly busy. The staff may be short with you, with little time to chit chat. Their goal is to treat the most serious medical case then move on to the next most serious case. If the staff seem uninterested in your headache, you'll have to be patient with them until they have the time to listen to your concerns.
You'll Pay for the Most Expensive Aspirin
Everything in the emergency room is more expensive than somewhere else. The hospital must cover the overhead of the highly-trained personnel and the high-tech equipment. Our culture demands that ERs be prepared to handle almost any medical emergency. The cost of this expertise is added to every medication and procedure provided in the ER. The way the insurance companies reimburse for emergency services also affects the price. That's why you might pay $25 for an aspirin in the ER, says Healthcare Finance.
Your ER Visit May Not Cure You, Anyway
The function of an emergency room is not to cure a disease or repair an injury. It is to get a patient to a point where they are stabile enough to pass on to other doctors for further testing, diagnosis and treatment. For example, if your headache is due to your blood pressure being high because of weight, stress and diet, you may get a pain pill from the ER and be told to get in touch with your regular doctor for a hypertension screening.
Consider carefully whether you should make that trip to the emergency room or wait until your doctor can see you. There are times when an emergency room visit is an absolute necessary. But if you can wait, save yourself the money and the stress and wait until your family doctor is available.
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