I’m happy for you if you’ve visited a hospital emergency room and have nothing but words of praise regarding the facility’s efficiency and expediency.
I wish my story were just as happy.
First, let me say that I’m certain the majority of emergency health-care professionals are stellar individuals, dedicated to easing people’s suffering. I also realize they did not invent the emergency health-care system. I do not cast blame in their direction.
Having said all that, I recently insisted a loved one visit a local hospital emergency room after he suffered a head injury that knocked him out for five minutes and left him with temporary short-term memory loss.
We arrived at the emergency room around 11 p.m. on a Sunday night. We didn’t leave the parking lot for home until after 2:30 a.m,, which was just a few minutes after the doctor finally saw my loved one for the first time.
In the time we sat there, we could have driven to a hospital in Sacramento, or even San Francisco.
Instead, we waited, certain that it wouldn’t – couldn’t – take much longer.
It was much longer. Hours longer. All the while the waiting-room television flickered on some channel about movie stars, but the picture wouldn’t hold still. A nearby cart held empty coffee carafes.
We joined a motley group: a couple of young women with a toddler who looked perky and happy; an older guy who coughed like he was going to hurl a lung (God, please don’t let him have TB) a quiet, flushed-faced little girl with her mother; a jittery teenage girl with her mother, another teenage girl who moaned; a young couple with a sleeping baby; an ashen-faced 30-something guy in pajama bottoms and white T-shirt – his right elbow was tucked into his ribcage, his eyes and mouth were squeezed into a grimace.
I imagined those people at their homes when they decided to grab coats and keys and purses and rush to this emergency room, as we had. Scared. Worried. A little panicked.
No time to shower, No time to change clothes. Hurry, hurry, hurry!
My sister did her best to talk us out of it.
“Trust me,” she said. “He’d be better off going by ambulance.”
That was not an option. My stubborn loved one barely agreed to have a friend drive him to the hospital. He sure as hell wouldn’t agree to an ambulance ride.
In the end, his head was scanned before he was even seen by a doctor who said, yes, you’ve got yourself a concussion. Here are some papers to read about cautions. Go home, get some rest and take it easy.
My mind was at ease knowing he would probably be OK.
My mind was not at ease over not just how long he’d waited in the emergency room, but the other patients, too.
Shouldn’t we consider an emergency “waiting” room an oxymoron?
I wonder about people who sit in emergency rooms alone, with nobody to insist they stay when they’d rather leave.
I wonder how many people get fed up and return home after two, three or even four hours, unseen or untreated by a doctor.
I wonder how many people arrive at hospital emergency rooms with serious conditions that only grow more serious as they’re left to languish in the waiting room, exposed to yet other illnesses.
I wonder how many people leave emergency rooms so frustrated and angry at the system that they vow to never return, no matter what.
Most of all, I wonder how the United States, a country that boasts some of the most advanced and expensive health-care in the world, could allow such an inefficient emergency-room system.
As consumers we wouldn’t tolerate a three-hour wait for a bank transaction or to pick up dry cleaning or all kinds of other services where consumers show up without an appointment.
We wouldn’t tolerate a three-hour wait to buy groceries.
We wouldn’t tolerate a three-hour wait to get our car’s oil changed.
For Pete’s sake, we wouldn’t tolerate a three-hour wait with our dog or cat in a veterinary waiting room. Even in an emergency.
So why do we tolerate it in our human health-care system?
Many emergency rooms are ailing. What’s the cure?
