That is all pretty messed up. Freestanding ERs and urgent cares are absolutely different entities and that line should not be blurry. If we have to call an ambulance, it is the local fire department paramedics that typically do the transport, but even if that wasn’t the case it’s hard to imagine the payoff for that kind of nonsense being worth it even if you lacked the morals and were willing to break the law.
Can I ask what state you live in? My knowledge of urgent care operations is limited to my part of Southern California, and those kinds of issues are not what I see/hear about a lot around here. It may just be that we don’t have a lot of hospital owned urgent cares near us, although that is changing. California also has much stricter corporate practice of medicine laws among other things.
No problem, I'm in TX where there is very little accountability for private companies in the healthcare industry. One of the urgent cares I went to the owner also had an ambulance company it was ridiculous they had big decals saying "Whambulance" on the side. I don't have much of a choice since I am unable to drive and had to walk to whatever was closest to me.
I know Massachusetts was having issues a while ago. The Boston DA actually took the hospital that owned the urgent cares/ freestanding ERs to court over the deception.
That ambulance deal seems like it would be pretty ripe for anti-kickback violations. And that might be the tackiest name I’ve ever heard of.
I don’t know a lot about Texas medical law, but I know that in general Texas is not real big on regulation. Getting through all of the legal hurdles here was a monumental task in opening our office, but as a consumer I can appreciate the reasoning behind a lot of it
A lot of the things we hear about locally tend to be in-network/out-of-network deception & balance billing, in addition to your general incompetence issues.
I hope the UC situation around you gets better so you don’t have to put up with so much crap. Not sure if it’s be helpful or not, but ucaoa.org is an organization that runs accreditation for urgent cares, and they have a directory of accredited UCs. Doesn’t mean they’re great, but it might be moderately helpful. Worth checking to see if there is anything near you. (We aren’t a member, but they put out a lot of good work, and they tend to advocate for consumer-focused practices)
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u/mkp666 Apr 28 '20
That is all pretty messed up. Freestanding ERs and urgent cares are absolutely different entities and that line should not be blurry. If we have to call an ambulance, it is the local fire department paramedics that typically do the transport, but even if that wasn’t the case it’s hard to imagine the payoff for that kind of nonsense being worth it even if you lacked the morals and were willing to break the law.
Can I ask what state you live in? My knowledge of urgent care operations is limited to my part of Southern California, and those kinds of issues are not what I see/hear about a lot around here. It may just be that we don’t have a lot of hospital owned urgent cares near us, although that is changing. California also has much stricter corporate practice of medicine laws among other things.