One Long Monday Night in the Greatest Healthcare System on Earth

[dixiegrrrrl]

21. At least your ER had triage....ours did not when Mr. D.'s lung collapsed.

On a Saturday morning.
any after hours calls to our local doc are answered by a machine, saying "go to the ER if this is an Emergency".

We went to our ONLY hospital, the ER was packed, there was NO triage nurse,
there was one very senior citizen woman sitting behind a glass window, situated so that the waiting room was not visible to her, with a sign in clipboard, and, as it turned out, her job was to collect info. and insurance details before anone could be seen.
Mr. d was having great difficulty breathing, and knew from previous lung collapse there was a chance his other lung could also collapse. He was hunched over gasping for air.
I scoped out the waiting room, saw that no one else was showing any signs of distress, no apparent wounds.
I went over to the lady behind the glass, with Mr. d's ID and insurance cards and told her he was a heart patient of local doctor x, ( true) could not breath, ( true) and I was afraid he MIGHT be having a heart attack.
That did the trick.
He was examined and admitted to the ICU.

But since he has no outpatient insurance, the ER billed us 800.00 for the 40 minutes he was there.
The Medicare re-imbursement rate is 114.00.
Turns out the ER is staffed by contracted docs, who also "own" the ambulance service, and they can bill anything they want.