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"For five desperate minutes, emergency room doctors at UC Davis Medical Center frantically tried to revive Scott Hawkins."
"The charge for those five minutes: $29,186.50"
"The bill sent to Hawkins' family was an undiscounted "rack rate" that hospitals charge the uninsured"
"Hawkins was mistakenly classified by the hospital as medically indigent. Had the hospital realized that the student was insured, the bill would have been sent to his insurer, Kaiser Permanente, which would undoubtedly have paid thousands of dollars less."
www.sacbee.com/ourregion/...313228.html
a point raised earlier in this tribe based on an article from the Atlantic. there is no logical justification for the insane cost of Emergency Room visits. the opaque nature of medical billing system through your insurer means you the consumer have no concept of the inflated cost.
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Re: $29,186.50 for 5 minutes in Emergency Room
Mon, November 9, 2009 - 7:07 AMI took my wife to a local Hospital E room for a Sunday night emergent issue that couldn't wait for the next day.
We waited hours. Then when she was seen the battery of high tech that was brought to bear was staggering.
Then finally after batteries of humming and buzzing whirling and whizzing multi-million dollar machines (& their well paid technicians) were through analyzing every molecule in her being, a nurse took a needle and jammed it into her thumb nail to release the pressure from getting her thumb slammed in a car door.
I forget what the bill was but it was staggering.
I came away with the sense that they were using all that high tech equipment - just to use it. - that is to justofy charging for it's use so as to pay off the loans they would have taken to pay for it all.
I f that is so, then it's kind of unfair. The hospital buys a gigazilllion dollar hunk of something - that they really do need and really can help improve medical care - for those who need it - and they use it on every one as a sort of tax on all who pass through.
Then there is the weird phenom of charging uninsured people as much as three times the fees charged to insurance companies is sort of weird. I understand that they need the really high rate to use as a negotiating chip when contracting with insurance companies but why not also simply "discount" people who check a box on the admission form indicating a desire to have the discount.
Charging uninsured people treble is no way to get paid.
Michelle Stumbles was a Vice President at a Chicago Hospital where the uninsured minorities were charged triple the rates of the insured people. Why is it that She has nothing to say about this?
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Re: $29,186.50 for 5 minutes in Emergency Room
Mon, November 9, 2009 - 11:11 AMI wish I had your hospital. I had been going to doctors for over 15 years with multiple complaints, telling them something was really wrong with me. They blew me off without any testing at all, telling me I was basically a hypochondriac. Turns out, I was dying. Had they performed just one of three tests on me, that are usually performed when certain complaints are made, they would have discovered an anomaly. It took the free clinic I went to to notice something amiss. A free clinic, that does the least possible to solve a problem to save costs, and THEY found the problem. Because of them, I saved up for the endocrinologist and discovered my fatal illness with ONE test. The damage is already done, and my life will never be the same. I would have been much healthier had they bothered to give me ANY tests these past years, but no, now I have multiple organ damage and something on my ovary. I wish I could sue.
Again, I wish I had your hospital with their ridiculous machines. Never said I would pay them though, heheh. -
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Re: $29,186.50 for 5 minutes in Emergency Room
Mon, November 9, 2009 - 1:38 PMI see no reason why you can not sue. Failure to diagnose is a failure.
And you say you suffered a har4m as a result.
That is all you need.
You have 6 years to to sue on a tort in most states.
However you face some obstacles.
You need to hire testifying experts. You lawyer may be working on commission but the experts gotta be paid up front.
Expert witnesses are the highest paid people in the whole industry.
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Re: $29,186.50 for 5 minutes in Emergency Room
Mon, November 9, 2009 - 11:04 PM>> Failure to diagnose is a failure. <<
the argument will be that they were following "best practices." lawsuits usually succeed when someone does something. so the proactive surgeon for instance that performs a risky operation that turns out bad is very likely to get hammered. the general practitioner that follows the rule-book but neglects to perform an "exotic" test. much harder to prove negligence even though he's far more deserving of punishment than the "cowboy" surgeon. that's the world we've inherited as a result of all the wonderful malpractice abuse. people too timid to take risks and functionaries going through the motions. -
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Re: $29,186.50 for 5 minutes in Emergency Room
Tue, November 10, 2009 - 7:31 AMAdhering to Best Practices and industry standards do nothing to alter the liability issue.
That's all the sort of thing one hears in the usual fluff and noise but, at best it mitigates punitive damages not the substantive Tort claim on liability. It ends up being the statement that says: "Hey look, we were doing it the same way everybody does it."
In this instance the plaintiff would have to show that any reasonable physician would have don the test and that failure to do so is the proximate cause of the harm.
I think it's easy to do in cases like this. It develops into a battle of the experts who testify. The defense will have their experts the Plaintiff will have theirs. the experts will testify about the foreseeability, the pain issues, the life style handicap, the reasonableness of the testing that wasn't done. The jury will feel sympathy for the poor fuker who, but for, the Evil Doctor's negligence would be whole today.
Then you cash the check.
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Re: $29,186.50 for 5 minutes in Emergency Room
Mon, November 9, 2009 - 11:00 PM>> The damage is already done, and my life will never be the same. I would have been much healthier had they bothered to give me ANY tests these past years, but no, now I have multiple organ damage and something on my ovary. I wish I could sue. <<
I'm sorry. what an unnecessary nightmare.
and you're right. I think the CYA of defensive medicine and most of the responses to our litigious society seems to push everyone to "best practices." which is a catch-all phrase that describes a bunch of people in a particular field all doing the same thing. it's also something that crushes initiative and creativity. -
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Re: $29,186.50 for 5 minutes in Emergency Room
Tue, November 10, 2009 - 3:59 PMA few years ago, I was shot in the chest at very close range with a high-powered pellet gun. The pellet lodged between two ribs, about 3/4" in. I made the mistake of allowing the paramedics to get involved, because I didn't know the extent of the damages at the time. I was just going along with the opinions of the "experts." They put me in an ambulance for a two mile ride to the emergency room, and the doctor there worked feverishly for about 45 minutes to remove the pellet. He finally gave me some information on the situation, and asked if I wanted to have him cut my chest open so he could get a grip on the pellet, or just leave it in there. I hadn't thought of that option, and he had never mentioned that it was an option.
Not wanting a big scar across my chest, I chose to leave the pellet in. It's still there to this day, and I would never know it except for the small scar. But I wasn't made aware of that option. So I walked out of the hospital, after 45 minutes of painful treatment, in no better condition than I went in, and the bill was over $3,000. I had insurance, so I'm sure it would have been even more otherwise. Now, if I was homeless, or an illegal immigrant, the hospital would have had to eat the cost.
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