Really really sucks being a patient.

My money was on their dicovering some-
thing with the Colonoscopy…now, this
is starting to get interesting.

The tired old bitter gripe from some
of the less than motivated ER Staff
was always “why are all these Medicaid people coming in here instead of going to their blocked PCP’s…that kid just
has a runny nose…blah blah blah “.
Often as not, the kid with a runny
nose also had serious RSV Bronchio-
litis or Febrile Seizures or Rabies
Encephalitis. I’m no psychologist
to even conjecture at what such
people may be acting out over,
nor would I really want to know,
but, quite obviously, if someone
has a problem with treating the
indigent or poor people, they
really dont belong in Healthcare.

Val: Let’s just say you were passionate about the issue. Excellent points raised.

Celeste: My understanding in the ER is presumably it’d be part of the total bill or free if they genuinely determined you didn’t need any care (unlikely). As for PCP time outside of a group practice where one would have call/night clinic, I don’t know, but if it was reporting something related to a recent office visit, I can’t see really charging much if at all. A cold call would be another story.

Happy: I hadn’t even thought of that (student’s POV: legal/financial incentives aren’t at the forefront) and it makes a good point. Still, I’d like to think that the prospect of losing a loved one would be more persuasive than being served with a lawsuit.

A much more robust and better developed screening tool was designed over the past decade by PKC Corp - and their questions take 20+ minutes to get to a reasonable answer. Of course, no one is willing to spend that amount of time on an online survey. So there you have it… the amount of detail necessary to get to a potentially correct answer is beyond the attention span of “Interweb users” - yet another reason why people need to see their doctors to get the truth teased out.

Oh, and Internet usage is way up in the 50-70y age group. Complicated issues will come up - if not by the patient, but the patient’s family member trying to research things for him/her.

Nor, contrary to the implications of some, did I in any way suggest their CARE was less than proper. I agree with your inference that the post was something of a Rorschach test, in that people saw in it, at least in part, what they chose to see rather than what I actually said. Not that the same can’t be said of most of us, at one time or another.

I figured it’d piss some people off, which is why I didn’t post it for so long. I wasn’t kidding when I said I finally said WTF and did it, partly because i’m intending (once again) to hang it up. Emptied out my out box…