Urgent care near me - Patients Using Emergency Rooms as a Free Clinic Are Increasing Emergency Room Wait Times.

Many consumers are surprised to find that a trip to the emergency room is much more complicated than it used to be. Across the nation, patients are finding out that they often wait for hours to be seen. They sit in the lobby for two to three hours before they can be taken to into the main body of the emergency room. Once the patient has a room, it could be several more hours before a physician sees them. The process is frustrating for patients, staff, and hospitals. There are many different factors that affect this growing trend. Patients are using the emergency room for more than just emergencies. Many people do not carry health insurance for a variety of reasons. Thus, they do not have a regular physician that they can go see when they are sick or injured. The emergency rooms are now filled with patients who do not need emergency care. Patients know that they cannot be turned away for any reason. So they use the emergency room as their own free health care clinic. This abuse of the systems ties up valuable bed space that is designed to handle emergencies. The advent of free standing urgent care centers helps some.

Nurses, doctors, and other hospital staff are frustrated with the abuse of the system and the inability to care for those patients that have true emergencies. Urgent care near me agrees that an emergency is different things to different people. But, they all agree that the emergency room has become a holding place for everything from mentally ill patients to people with things as uncomplicated as a cold. These patients take up beds that should be used for heart attacks, lacerations, and things such as accident victims.

Urgent care nears me - Everyone gets treated, but the wait times continue to build.

Hospital systems are frustrated too. Their patients are unhappy, their staff is unhappy, and hospitals are losing millions of dollars in revenue due to unpaid bills. Hospitals need to make money. Their profits benefit the community in the way of increased services. In addition, when staff can earn more money they spend it in the community and contribute to the local economy. Hospitals are usually large employers that offer hundreds of jobs, pay thousands in taxes, and overall have an enormous effect on the community they serve. They want their patients, staff, and community to have a positive experience when they come to the emergency room. They are aware that patients have choices, and they can choose to go elsewhere if their needs are not met. So there is no easy answer for this increasing trend.

At some point Urgent care near me, the politicians are going to have to step in and re-evaluate the hospital's position. Everyone needs to pay their bills. Hospitals should not be required to deliver millions of dollars in free care each year because a patient made the choice not to pay for health insurance. At the same time, a person experiencing a true emergency needs to be seen regardless of their ability to pay. It is a vicious circle that will take a lot of intervention to resolve.