[CFrance]

Originally Posted by golfing eagles

You are correct. A patient can only see what they can see----that is a full waiting room with people sitting around, some people who come after them getting seen first, and a whole bunch complaining about the wait. This is not a first come, first serve situation. About 1/2 the people in that ER waiting room are accompanying a patient, not one themselves. When you tell the receptionist your problem, there is an immediate preliminary triage that shows on the nurses' computer screen. You then see a RN who does a full triage, which the physician uses to prioritize cases. To the casual observer, it looks like nothing is happening, but in reality each patient is already in a queue and probably the ER doc has developed a preliminary plan to evaluate the patient.

When my wife was there in March, there were about 17 patients and a total of about 30 people in the waiting room. Glancing around (and this is just a guesstimate) my impression was that I could treat 15 of the 17 in my office, 1 at urgent care, and the 1 remaining patient was a close enough call to justify her presence. I have no idea of the severity of the illnesses that were already in an ER room.

Also, at least in NY, it was cheaper for a Medicaid patient to take an $800 ambulance ride to the ER than to call a $6 car service, so emergency vehicles were being abused for $3. We eventually fixed some of this by having ambulance crews with non-urgent cases take the patient to the waiting room and register as if they walked in

GE, with all due respect to your knowledge... If only everyone were a doctor and could diagnose the severity of his own illness/emergency. Or if only (and maybe they did; OP didn't say) the doctors and nurses communicated every single thing in your original reply to her to ease her fears over her condition and the degree of contagiousness of her roommate. The latter may not be possible due to time constraints, but somewhere along the line somebody must have had enough time to convey that information. Or they should make the time, since 16 out of 17 patients, using your experience as a for-instance, in an ER aren't in life-threatening conditions.