Patients Can Pay A High Price For ER Convenience

[CFrance]

Here is an interesting story (short read) about a new kind of ER that's popping up across the country. These are not connected to hospitals. They are private Er's. Patients Can Pay A High Price For ER Convenience : Shots - Health News : NPR (http://tinyurl.com/ky4ala6)

"Medical entrepreneurs are remaking the emergency room experience. They're pulling the emergency room out of the hospital and planting it in the strip mall.

It's called a "free-standing ER," and some 400 of them have opened across the country in the past four years."

They tend to be located in areas where people are affluent and are likely to have good medical insurance.

Any thoughts? Russ Boston?

[ilovetv]

The high price and for-profit status is nothing new, considering how many hospitals across the country, operating the typical ER, are for-profit.

And nobody mentioned that ER facility fees are so high because of the high percentage of bills that go totally unpaid, and bills that are seriously underpaid by medicare, medicaid and insurance.

This below is a good illustration of why the hospital system here in TV and Leesburg should open a free-standing full-service 24-hour ER in Brownwood, since plans for another hospital at Brownwood were ditched and wait times in high season here are dangerous.

"The problem with urgent care is if you're having something serious, you go there [and] they either call 911 or they send you to the emergency department," says Brian Orsak, co-founder of St. Michael's Emergency Rooms, which has three locations in Houston. "We're equipped basically to handle anything."

[Monkei]

Middle men Making money on the backs of sick people.