Comments on: MICHELLE OBAMA’S PATIENT DUMPING SCHEME

By: robert rogers

robert rogers — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 19:02:12 +0000

seems this sort of patient dumping is catching on!
how about a person with insurance taken to the hospital by helicopter for a serious head injury after a mva sewn up and sent home and told to check back after 2 weeks?
this same person is now going in for more surgery on thier head next week to try to repair the great job done at the hospital
talk about a savings there $$

By: Mary

Mary — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 04:12:59 +0000

Thank you to the courageous people who informed this nation of the antics of the Obama’s and the Axelrod’s. Truth always stands on its own. How is it that nonmedical personel are able to yield such horrendous havoc on their fellow countrymen?! They are corrupt. What cruelty they inflicted on people who trusted them!

By: Jeffrey Johnson

Jeffrey Johnson — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 02:20:32 +0000

I am appalled that such nonsense goes, and from the highest levels of our country none the less. The rich get richer, and if you are Obama’s friend, so will you.

By: DG in GA

DG in GA — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 22:39:40 +0000

While I agree that triage is necessary in ERs, I would like to know more about what was going on at UCMC. My local ER (in an Atlanta suburb) is always full - and it mostly appears to be uninsured illegals. But when my family needs the ER - for which we will pay - we are only given services if the ailment is life-threatening or another urgent problem like a broken bone or excessive bleeding. Other than that, we are referred to a private physician. We don’t even make it into the waiting room. This makes me wonder why, day and night, the ER is still filled with people who aren’t broken and bleeding, and who don’t appear to be able to pay. Are insured people turned away to provide room for the uninsured? Don’t get me wrong, I am not opposed to having some sort of inexpensive clinics where the indigent can get treatment for minor ailments. I just don’t understand why, if the ER is turning away non-emergency patients, they are still mobbed 24/7? And how long can our local hospital, which is a for-profit company, stay in business?

By: Catron

Catron — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 01:13:20 +0000

I’m all for “triaging out” the clinic/urgent care patients. What I have a problem with is their obvious strategy of reserving IP beds for well-heeled patients with good insurance while shipping the Medicaid inpatients to the hapless community hospital across town.

By: Nurse K

Nurse K — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 00:59:25 +0000

“Triage out” is an appropriate thing to implement. As long as the patient does not have an emergency condition, the duty of the emergency dept is done. Traditionally, patients are still treated for their URIs or sore throats or chronic migraines, but this is a waste of ER resources.

I got a good friend that works at the equivalent ER in my state, the county ER in a mostly black area of town and she says that at least 80% of “business” is straight-up clinic/urgent care stuff. Poverty and blackness are related however you want to look at it, and this is also correlated with an overuse of the emergency department for non-urgent complaints.

Hope and change will come when the most expensive level of care reserved for those who are the most ill or injured is not used for clinic-visit stuff. If there are alternative resources available, those should not go unused.