So How Sick Are You?
Are you actually knocking at death's door, or does having the flu just make it feel that way? At a growing number of emergency rooms, patients who aren't experiencing a true medical emergency like a heart attack are being evaluated and then referred to other medical practitioners— or asked to pay a fee to be treated in the ER.
Memorial Hospital in Jacksonville, Fla., charges nonemergency patients $100. West Houston Medical Center levies a $150 fee. At University of Colorado Hospital in Denver, insured patients who want but don't need ER treatment must make their ER copayment upfront (around $100), while the uninsured must pay the standard ER fee of $260.
With the number of uninsured at 46 million and climbing, overcrowding, not greed, is driving the need for fees, say experts.
"Increasingly, the burden of uncompensated care is falling on emergency departments," says Brian Keaton, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians. "The safety net is priceless, but it has a cost, and somehow we have to cover that cost."
And that means some patients may have to pony up.
This story appears in the January 29, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.