George
Posted on 07/13/2008 6:31:20 PM PDT by Coleus
Bean-thin and sallow, George tugged on a cigarette in the blistering parking lot of a Camden men's shelter. Standing on the pavement, his foot on a picnic bench, he recalled how he took his first drink at 13. The hard living shows in the lines of George's face -- and in his medical history. When he gets sick, which is often, the 55-year-old has no place to go except one of the city's emergency rooms.
George is a "super user," a new name coined to describe people who turn to the ER with astonishing frequency and at an astonishing cost to a health system under siege on all fronts. George said he has been admitted to a Camden emergency room 30, maybe even 40, times in the past year alone; sometimes with crushing chest pains, other times from shortness of breath, or surging blood pressure. Mostly, he said, it's the pain from cirrhosis of his liver that sends him there.
"I don't like going to the hospital," said George, who allowed himself to be photographed but asked his last name not be published. "But sometimes I have no choice. I get pain I would not wish on an enemy." Researchers studying the crisis of America's overcrowded emergency rooms are beginning to focus on this largely undocumented phenomenon, the super users who turn to hospital emergency rooms dozens, even hundreds, of times. Researchers say a seemingly intractable problem could be solved, in large part, by focusing on just the top 1 percent of emergency room users, who in Camden alone cost $46 million over five years.
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
Quarter century ago I was tying down the night shift of a northeastern city ambulance. Probably a quarter of our runs were for these sorts. We say that such super-users were calling the “DPA Taxi”.
When health care is free, we will be a nation of 300 million superusers. Why not?
Notice the article seems to avoid the fact that illegal immigrants are frequent users of the ER for more “routine” medical needs...
D = Department of
P = Public
A = Assistance
a.k.a. Welfare
Why change to universal health care? We already have it!! All the free cheese eaters do is show up, get the free care, and walk away. Just like in universal health care, the working class gets stuck with the bill anyway!!
I have to tell you that I am seriously examining taking my income and net worth to $-0-.
I would be much better off in the short run than paying 40% of my income in taxes and putting 25% of what's left into my fuel tank so I can go to work, pay taxes and buy fuel.
Exactly. The margins are different for each person, but almost everyone has a point beyond which working (or working harder) simply does not make sense. Socialism inevitability pushes more and more people over that line. “I have housing. I have food. I have health care. Why on earth do I want to go to an office and spend 8 hours a day working???”
Why? Because if you don't go in to work, it's off to the gulag.
All you need do to see what is really going on is run a credit report on applicants for apartments in low income area. Repeated ambulance trips to the ER and never paid for. Page after page of unpaid ER bills. Every cough, sore throat etc is an ambulance ride to the ER. The excuse? No car or medical
insurance. Door to door service is great when you don’t have to pay. So all the other folks going to the hospital pick up the tab for these lazy good for nothing creeps. Up goes the cost of insurance for folks that work and pay.
I thought it said "FR"...
...and doing what to them? Kill them? Ban them?
One of the problems with US medical care is that to get any kind of care, you have to go see a doctor. For people like this, why not have someone like an Army medic treat them? It’s good enough for our soldiers, ought to be good enough for people with no money, at least for routine care. How many times does a doctor have to see someone with the same problem and same solution? Many poor countries I’ve been to, when people are sick, they just go to the pharmacy and get their medical advice and medicines. Rarely go to a doctor.
Super users with no insurance should be cared for in M*A*S*H tents by Army medics (especially those in training), not inside true emergency rooms in dedicated hospitals.
Unless you want ER’s packed with the dregs of society, while everyone else has to wait for quality care. In that case, carry on as before.
Perhaps the costs of these ER visits for welfare bums should be deducted from the gift they get each month, even if it means these bums not getting any benefits for an extended period of time until the tab was paid off.
for some of this guy’s complaints and chronic illness,why isn’t he assigned to the clinic ?
“I wouldn’t mind univeral healthcare if it is run like “Out of the Ashes” “
Sounds too intelligent for the government.
Some drug addicts will visit a half-dozen emergency rooms a day, looking for someone to write them a prescription for Percocet. I've heard of patients who have had more than 100 CT scans just at one hospital, and who knows how many hundreds of others at St. Elsewhere. These folks end up getting radiation doses that exceed the exposure received by residents of Hiroshima a mile away from the atom bomb. Their risk of cancer is vastly increased.
Well, they do. Much primary care is now provided by physician's assistants and nurse practitioners. If they want to write a prescription they do so, and just have an MD or DO approve it. This is the wave of the future.
ER Ping
I thought it said “FR”
The article talks about a team consisting of a nurse practitioner, a public health worker and a social worker. A lot more degrees and manpower than a medic.
You need more than a medic when the guy is dying of cirrhosis, if you’re not just going to let him die on the sidewalk. Or maybe you can just give him his pain meds and let him go easy.
George
At some point, there has to be a limit on what people can expect to receive for free.
Triage them, without fear of legal reprisal.
I would point out that your inference to murder wasn't really to generate further discussion, but rather to stifle. Please correct me if I am wrong, I've just grown so used to liberal suppositions.
I am EXCEEDINGLY right-wing...
My point was that there are few options. We are not allowed to handle those people separately, give them less care, demand they give up smokes, drugs or suds to get care, etc.
Got it. Please forgive... I wasn’t sending it personal; just have been arguing with too many libs lately and I’ve hardened to the point of no longer giving the benefit of the doubt when it seems equivocal.
You are right, of course. We have been handcuffed by EMTALA and what is already, effectively, socialized medicine. That a patient’s lack of personal responsibility is only exceeded by a desire for a jackpot grievance, doesn’t help.
The other side of the coin is a deterioration in medical decision making as a whole. A generation of physicians are being unleashed who are rewarded for expediency, haste, fear and remuneration. It is still possible to receive the best care in the world, just becoming less likely.
...
Few have the wherewithal to get to the pharmacist to fill prescriptions, or check their blood sugar or get transportation to follow up, say, with the specialist in Cherry Hill who the ER doctor told them to see.
Clearly, these people belong in a mental hospital, but the courts won't commit them anymore.
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