At 08:07 AM 1/19/03 -0800, Nick Arnett wrote:
Why don't they save money by educating people better about when to head for the ER and when to go to a clinic?
Many times the answer to that is "Why is there no walk-in clinic for urgent, but not-life-threatening, cases available to those who do not have a private doctor or belong to a HMO?"
Frex, in my admittedly limited experience with the local system, a sick person who calls the clinic at the county hospital will (after being checked to see if they meet the low-income standards�) be given an appointment at the clinic at a given time on a date a month or two in the future. If s/he says that s/he can't wait that long, s/he is instructed to come to the ER.
(�If they are not already "in the system" and have an county-issued ID card which identifies them as eligible for services at the clinic--and includes a code showing their income range which is used to determine how large their co-payment, etc., is -- then sometime during normal business hours _prior to the clinic appointment_ they must go to the eligibility office, show proof that they live in the county, proof of income, Medicare/Medicaid card, etc., and obtain the aforementioned ID card to take with them when they go back for their clinic appointment.)
Once they get to the clinic on the day of the appointment, they find that appointments are scheduled in bunches at fifteen-minute intervals during the clinic hours, which means they are likely to wait a couple of hours or so after the scheduled appointment time before their name is even called. Of course, this all describes the system as it works on a day when it is working. If perhaps something unexpected has come up and the randomly-assigned doctor with whom the appointment is scheduled is not able to be there on that particular day, then the patient, instead of seeing another doctor, is instructed to make another appointment, which of course will be another month or two in the future.
YMMV.
--Ronn! :)
I always knew that I would see the first man on the Moon.
I never dreamed that I would see the last.
--Dr. Jerry Pournelle
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