Item — HN Reader

How is discouraging people who don't actually need an ER from showing up at an ER a bad idea? If I have something urgent but not an emergency, I could either do ER or Urgent Care. If I'm pretty confident Urgent Care can handle it, it might make more sense to do 1-2h to go to an urgent care option vs. 10 minutes to ER and 4h wait (for care which exposes me to lots of other risks).

There are a bunch of things where I'd rather wait 8-24h at home, even in pain, than go to an overloaded emergency room.

3 comments

This article is not about that at all. It's about patients that need to be admitted (ie they DO need hospital treatment) being stuck in ERs because the hospital has no beds.

You have s home snd a nice one most likely. The typical ER "frequent flyer" does not. Many are unhoused or members of the renter class, or living with parents/caregivers/etc...

I think it would he interesting to compare teal estate prices and rent with ER overcrowding. My guess is few of the surplus patients own nice homes.

In my experience, urgent care charges extremely high and unpredictable prices. However, I agree with you that there should be some way for people to get routine things addressed quickly without going to the ER.