A 103-degree fever brought Grace to the E.R. last night at 6PM. She was admitted almost immediately. That was pretty fast (I will explain why later). But the actual care, meaning, having someone to look at what may have caused the fever, took another four hours. And then it took another two hours after that to decide if she had to stay the night for additional observation.
An ultrasound showed that Grace had some clogs of blood in her uterus from giving birth, which may have been what caused the fever. Though the E.R. staff were helpful and friendly, the time we spent waiting was excruciatingly long.
So this brought me to talk about the American Emergency Room system. While sitting in the waiting room until Grace was cleared to see visitors, I overheard some people complaining their wait time of 8+ hours. To add to that, when I left the hospital at the end of the visitation hours (around 1AM), I saw a young couple who were there long before we got there, but were still waiting to be admitted.
Bear in mind, to the American medical system, emergency doesn’t really mean EMERGENCY. What they really mean is usually one of the three things:
1. Your doctor’s not available to see you because he’s booked for the next three months. In the meantime, any medical problems you have, you are f*cked.
2. It’s the weekend/holiday, and your doctor does not see patients because he needs time off too. So you are f*cked.
3. You don’t have insurance, or that your insurance is so limited that it doesn’t cover whatever you are having problems with. So you are f*cked.
Then what does emergency really mean in America? It means, you are having certain medical issues and your primary doctor is not available to see you. So what do you do? You go to E.R. to get “immediate” treatment. Now, even the word immediate is a relative term in America. It’s all mathematics; everyone can agree that waiting for 12 hours to be admitted into E.R. is much more immediate than having to wait for three months to see a doctor. Yes?
In order to be admitted truly immediately into E.R. in the U.S., you must have a life-threatening condition or wound, merely having a terrible pain or maybe a broken thumb are not nearly enough. In our case, Grace has had high fever for more than a couple of hours, she had to be admitted and treated right away.
The ironic thing was, when I was with Grace inside E.R., there was a bum who was so drunk that he passed out on the street and got admitted into E.R.. And the staff said that was his third time THAT DAY in the E.R. and that he’s been a frequent in that particular hospital. So this begs the question, how come tax- and bill-paying customers are waiting for 10+ hours just to be diagnosed for their problems, street bums and crack heads who pass out from their drug of choice, and most likely will not pay the hospital bills, get to be cared for long before the others? It’s not to suggest that just because they choose to abuse their body and put their lives in danger that they shouldn’t be treated equally in the eyes of medicine. But it does open up a debate on just how the American society is going to approach this kind of abuse of its medical systems.
Americans used to blame illegal immigrants and foreigners for their high health insurance bills and expensive medical systems in general. It’s long been thought that the system has been abused by those immigrants so that Americans end up with the tab. But a recent study showed that just the opposite is true. It’s been the American-born citizens who are abusing their own medical systems (i.e. drug heads, suicide attempts that were designed to be rescued… which was the case of a woman next to Grace’s gurney). Immigrants, illegal or not, have not been using medical services all that frequently, even those who have health insurance.
A typical E.R. visit can cost anywhere from $1,000 to $15,000 USD depending on the procedures required to treat the patient. But in my experience (unfortunately, from stories of people around me), the average has been around $3,000 to $5,000. The cost usually includes seeing a nurse, have temperature and blood pressure and other vitals taken, minor treatments by a doctor, maybe they’ll even let you stay there for the night. For example, my brother had to go to E.R. for allergic reactions to aspirin (long story) a couple of years ago. That trip itself was $3,000 — the cost included a shot, one night stay at the hospital (sorry, no private rooms), and let’s not forget the ride in the emergency vehicle (that’s all to yourself; no need to pick up other people along the way).
Getting back to Grace, she’s feeling much better now. Her fever’s dropped back to normal (but still on the high side). Hopefully she’ll be home today. Thank god my mom’s here to help out. I can’t imagine taking care of Bryan all by myself with almost zero sleep.