In the last year or so, most hospitals have initiated a triage system that routes a patient to either the emergency room, or to hospital admission.
Before deciding which hospital to enter, one should consider two things: 1. Hospital services are NOT equal, and 2. while transferring from one emergency room to another hospital is routine, transferring from hospital to hospital almost requires an 'act of congress.'
Our experience: This spring we drove to a local hospital during one of Wife's episodes of respiratory distress. Triage sent her to their emergency room, where they demanded an up-front payment of $250, then determined she needed a procedure performed only at a critical care unit, which meant we were in for a lot of “hurry up and wait.” However, no bed was available in our preferred hospital, nor, for that matter in any central Arkansas unit. I asked about transferring her to the local hospital in order for her to be more comfortable, with a bathroom and a place for me to stay. THAT was when I heard about the 'act of Congress.'
So, she stayed in emergency, and I went back home for a few hours, AFTER being assured that the staff would attend to her dutifully. When I returned the next morning, I learned that her bladder had become so uncomfortable that she spent almost an hour trying to gain someone's attention, a mere ten feet or so from her. With the wires, she could not climb down from the gurney, and with her loss of voice, she couldn't holler. AND no one checked on her for over two hours. Finally, someone came by and delivered a bedside commode, and helped her off the table and through the wires.
Anyway, twenty three hours after being admitted to Emergency, Wife was loaded onto an ambulance and transported at top speed to the only acute care hospital with an open room. Unfortunately, this hospital was not the one dealing with her cancer issues.
From the beginning, that hospital treated Wife as a heart patient, instead of the cancer patient that she was. And, once more, because of the ‘act of Congress’ clause, that hospital had difficulty sharing records with the primary-care unit. Once the heart issue was addressed and a stop-gap procedure for the real issue was completed, the facility released her to go home, with a new burden - twenty-four-hour oxygen. THAT issue deserves its own article.
The next time Wife needed to visit the emergency room, we cut out the middle-man, and drove on our own directly to the primary care hospital’s emergency room, making the transfer to the hospital far smoother.
Medical decisions create more angst than most anticipate. Gaining knowledge of available health care centers, and considering all options beforehand can help alleviate some of that anxiety.
