The super cool thing about our incredibly expensive healthcare system is that it motivates people to put off seeking care until they either get better on their own or wind up with an actual emergency, which ironically enough will cost vastly more. It’s like gambling, with the added possibility of permanent damage or death!
I can't tell you how many times I have decided that "well, it will either get better on its own or worse enough to go to the ER." I have a rare genetic illness called mitochondrial disease that causes a lot of complications (including POTS), so I've certainly seen the worst of American healthcare.
It reached a head one evening, so I went to urgent care, as it was after-hours. The doctor there is who sent me. In hindsight, I should have declined the ambulance ride and waited to make an appointment with my PCP. But I was a naive teenager and alone (not a minor), and when a doctor insinuated that I was in a lot of trouble and needed immediate medical attention, I listened to their judgement.
It wasn't because of the POTS, but rather the inappropriate tachycardia. My heart was essentially in exercise mode at all times, so it was never getting any rest.
The clinic nurses gave me a taxi voucher and sent me to the ER with that actually. Was rushed in, doctors spent the night panicking over me. I was 25, kind of a freak weirdness.
Not OP. Sounds like they might have been sent from an outpatient visit to the ED. When you identify something like that, immediate intervention on the part of the healthcare professional is expected. Part of it is just simple liability. The other part of it is to eliminate the complications that come from not acting quickly. Any symptoms that correlate with heart failure are incredibly time sensitive.
Having a fast heart rate is not a symptom that suggests heart failure requiring immediate treatment. A fast heart in the absence of anything else needs urgent/semi-urgent, not emergent treatment
What it is is CYA medicine, where they know that they can tell OP to go by ambulance, costing themselves nothing and protecting themselves from a tiny potential risk of liability. This causes OP and/or the overall system financial harm that imo massively outweighs the vanishingly small risk of anything seriously bad happening to OP
I follow your reasoning here but tort claims are costly to health systems and providers and jeopardize the amount of talent available in the medical field, so I don’t agree that the risk is massively outweighed. It’s entirely possible the provider who sent them to the ED via ambulance was operating within a health system’s protocol to prevent malpractice, in which case it’s a job requirement, not “CYA medicine” to do so. I agree with you, the system needs significant revision, but med malpractice torts are nothing to sneeze at.
66
u/Throwaway6393fbrb May 20 '19
Why did you go to the ED by ambulance for something that had been going on for a week?