Hospital fees rant

Quote: DRich

The one by me is very close to my house, closer than any hospital. I can reasonably assume I will be going there shortly for a heart attack, stroke, or aneurysm.

You could even win the trifecta and get all three.

Quote: DRich

No, I mean Emergency Room. It is a very small building but has ambulances arriving ]

Never heard of them. Read an
article and it's just as I suspected.
The only upside for a patient is
it's in a convenient location.
The downsides are numerous.

Expensive for patients, often out-of-network
Expensive for payers (insurance companies), increasing payer steerage towards alternative care sites
Rarely reimbursed by Medicare and Medicaid
Weak referral (if you use this place as a job reference on a resume, good luck with that)

In other words, yet more ways
to overcharge people who can't
afford it.

"They also are prompting complaints from a growing number of people who feel burned by ­hospital-size bills, like $6,856 for a cut that didn’t require a stitch or $4,025 for an antibiotic for a sinus infection."

Quote: petroglyph

Do you have Munchausen's?

Not unless the doctors are doing unnecessary surgeries. My back operation last month was my 23rd surgery.

Quote: Evenbob

Expensive for patients, often out-of-network
Expensive for payers (insurance companies), increasing payer steerage towards alternative care sites
Rarely reimbursed by Medicare and Medicaid
Weak referral (if you use this place as a job reference on a resume, good luck with that)

These are franchises in some cities,
some guy in Texas owns six of
them. They're like ambulance
chasing law firms, if you're a doc
there it's because nobody else
will hire you. That's why it looks
bad on your resume.

These stand alone ERs look like urgent care centers and their customers think of them as urgent care centers until they get a bill for using an out of network ER.

Quote: Evenbob

These are franchises in some cities,
some guy in Texas owns six of
them. They're like ambulance
chasing law firms, if you're a doc
there it's because nobody else
will hire you. That's why it looks
bad on your resume.

I am surprised you know so much about them considering as of yesterday you had never heard of them.

Quote: DRich

I am surprised you know so much about them considering as of yesterday you had never heard of them.

Read a dozen articles about
something sometime. You'll
be amazed.

I suppose a few extra minutes saved to an ER saves some lives. But probably mostly a money-making scheme.

Where they need something like that is a rural farm community. I bet they’re all built in good sized cities.

Quote: rxwine

I suppose a few extra minutes saved to an ER saves some lives..

Big difference being, in a hospital
ER they shoot you right upstairs
if needed. In the McD's ER, you
have to take an expensive ride
in their ambulance first, wasting
god knows how much time.

I was discharged with the admonition to walk and an appointed for a visit to a cardiac treadmill facility, but they still charged me for being wheeled out in a wheelchair and would not let me walk.

one Rx was supposed to be 400mg a day, they made it 100mg a day. cant they read?

I just had a high brain pressure, low protein, low electrolytes crisis that obviously destroyed brain cells and impaired my faculties, yet they Rx'd a statin that crosses the blood brain barrier. It does not enhance quality of life nor improve longevity, it only makes me die with better cholesterol numbers in my file