Sorry all, I just need to let off steam. Our "local" (they cover about 15% of the state) Healthcare system is bullshit when it comes to any neurological care. 4 years ago, when I was 31, I had 3 strokes in a day. I spent 6 hours in the er waiting room because they thought I needed to sober up. After I didn't sober up, they spent 2 hours treating me for vertigo. When that didn't do anything for me, they finally looked and saw I was having a stroke. For the record, I was there with my wife who is an LPN at the same facility that repeatedly told them I was failing every portion of my fast screen. Once they finally concluded I was having a stroke, I was shoved off in a little side room and essentially ignored. I know this because my wife didn't leave my room while I was there, and my doctor was a personal friend of hers. He never saw me once. When she called him out on it, his response was "If I had known it was your husband, I would have stopped in." Nice to know they care about their patients. A couple years later, I was having major issues with bad vitamin levels, my primary sent me directly to the er to get scanned in a hurry, because my symptoms were showing as another stroke. Er refused to scan and treated me for vertigo, because I am too young to have a stroke, even though a) I've already had a stroke and b) one of their doctors had said that I may be having another stroke.
Now to the part of the story that really pisses me off. Yesterday, my wife had an appointment with her neurologist at 2pm because she's had a migraine for 3 weeks and lost vision in her left eye. Her neurologist sent her to ER to get scans done because she was afraid my wife was having a stroke. We finally left the ER at 2am, her scans were done at 1245. We sat in the ER waiting room until midnight. Of the people that were a bigger priority than us was 1) a woman with a sore tooth 2) a woman who had a stomach ache that ranked 5 on the pain scale and took a tums, 3) a man that was going through alcohol withdrawals and wanted pain meds, and 4) a man who missed his appointment with his probation officer. There were others who actually had major issues that we could see and we understand. The first 3 I mention, I can see how they may point to a larger issue, but I would argue that if a doctor sent someone there with signs of a stroke, that would rank higher than a toothache or a sore stomach. For the record, we were put low on the triage list because a pca that can't look at her record checked her in with the reason being "requested scans from primary". We're now at home, waiting for someone with a brain to read the scans.
We'll still be stuck with the (rough guess, based on my stroke) $5,000 bill. I'm beyond pissed off. I don't know how this is legal, for a hospital to basically say "we hope you die, so long as you leave someone to pay the bill." I'm sorry for the long rant. It just bothers me how people in a profession that's supposed to be about caring for others simply don't. It also bothers me how hospital systems are getting so corporate that only the paperwork matters (at a higher level), and they seem to get monopolies, in that we could drive an hour and a half to get another hospital to do the testing, but they'd start from the beginning, because they wouldn't have the system to see the note from the neurologist.
TL;DR when can Americans have Healthcare, instead of just a money pit that doesn't help anything?
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