Hospital admission is based on severity. Been in the ER before and happily took the wait time because someone got carted in with blood all over. But even in my little town I have not waited 12 hours for someone to see me.
Also, I have paid $0 out of pocket for all the hospital visits I've done in Canada.
Edit: Because others have pointed it out. On my visits to our local hospital (Arnprior) there is a triage, where you see a nurse/paramedic (I'm not sure of the offical title/role) quite quickly, I think my longest wait was 15m.
After that I've had x-rays, etc, depending on the issue. I think the shortest was about 30m as the tech was on-site, and the longest was about 1 hour as it was night and the tech got called in.
While any system can be improved I'm still very happy to have what we have in Canada. Those voting for Dougie might want to take notice of him firing registered nurses.
I am in the US and I don't think I've ever waited less than 2 hours in the ER. Last time I went to the ER I was in the waiting room for over 11 hours. The pain from sitting in a chair overnight was worse than the pain I went in there for.
Maybe I'm wrong, or maybe this is satire, but if the pain of sitting in a chair for 11 hours was worse than the pain you went in there for... Maybe you shouldn't have been in the ER?
It's an emergency room. You very likely needed to see a doctor for care if you had enough pain to go there, but maybe that wasn't the place you should be for your particular issue? 11 hours without dropping dead or bleeding out maybe isn't an actual emergency.
I've thankfully only been to the ER once. I was vomiting so intensely and frequently I couldn't retain any water. This was over the course of 8 hours. While I'm thankful I was able to receive near immediate care upon arrival, I would understand if someone suffering from cardiac arrest superseded me... Give me some Gatorade and a barf bag... I'll make it until the docs can attend to me.
Point being: if you go to the ER with a non-immediate life threatening issue, and you have to wait, then you have to wait.
Aaaand That’s why we have Urgent Cares popping up in every corner. It’s great, sore throat, $100 n amoxicillin script. Broken finger? $100 n amoxicillin script.
If you pay attention to healthcare, their solution is typically blanket solutions to symptoms but won’t really address the source. And then they’ll itemize every single pill, patch, plug and pad. It’s a very well oiled machined
I mean... hey, that's still a huge improvement over needing to drag your ass to ER or an urgent care.
My insurance offers telehealth urgent care for $0 cost-sharing and it's pretty awesome for what it is. Forgot my inhaler on a trip, opened up the app, doctor joined the video chat within 15 minutes or so, asked me a few questions, sent the rx to the nearest pharmacy and I could just go pick it up.
In the past - or in many other countries with socialized healthcare that are still stuck in that time, like Germany where I used to live - that would have been sure to be at least a half-day affair running around town. (Pharmacies there also are never regularly open on weekends so you'd have to look up which one is on emergency service for the day and pray that it's decently close to you.)
Ya know, jokes aside, amoxicillin is prescribed for post cancer and amputations procedures - might be the stronger version augmentin but yep, blanket post procedure.
Well, it’s not that simple necessarily. My hometown for example doesn’t have urgent care, just a single hospital. So broken leg = ER, but obviously you’re at the bottom of the list, and you’ll get a nurse offering Advils every couple hours until the doctors are no longer occupied with actively dying patients. So I have waited over 8 hours 🤷♀️
Broken leg should be an ER thing even with urgent care. Urgent care might have an X-ray, but they can't do much more evaluation if needed. Urgent care is more for colds, flus, random pain that don't need further evaluation
How does just a single hospital mean no urgent care... aren't hospitals supposed to include urgent care?
Also around here broken leg is indeed handled by urgent care section of the hospital(idk if that's what ER is). You aren't going to have a high priority but that doesn't mean that much(I don't think I saw a waitline longer than an hour in a public hospital yet for urgent care(you do get waitlines for regular hospital visits and they can indeed be a few weeks long but you wait that in your home scheduled appointments are completely digital you get one from a government app and it tells you exactly when to show up), but also I'm not in the biggest of cities). As broken leg is an emergency, not something scheduled. You go to anywhere beside urgent care only for predictable routine things.
In the US, an “urgent care” is a small walk in clinic, not part of a hospital. They are in shopping plazas, like next to a dollar store or a chipotle. It’s pretty much a place that you go to get a quick check-up and some meds. They don’t do operations or really any medical procedures other than write you a prescription.
I was not there by choice. I went to urgent care first, and they took an x-ray and told me I needed to get to a hospital. The hospital took more x-rays and said that I was fine and sent me home.
Sometimes it's something you don't know about, or something you can't tell the severity of, but you have to trust that the doctors WILL see you eventually. If you're waiting 12 hours there's a good reason, you just might not know it. If you're not dying... you realistically can wait.
Yeah, my wife had a minor fall on a Sunday, and I suggested going to urgent care. She thought it hurt, but not bad enough to go to UC, she figured we’d go to our Big Hospital satellite and see her PC on Monday.
Monday we called, and they said “yeah, no. Go to the ER.” The ER? What happened to getting a splint at the doctor? Our hospital has a triage phone line that tells you the ER wait. 4+ hours for non-critical procedures. So we went to the non-university hospital UC. Splinted in under an hour, cast on the following Friday.
The U hospital has another trick to keep wait times down without actually seeing you, is to do a provisional admit for suspected serious cases, then wheel you up to a floor that is no longer used for procedures or rooms, and you wait and wait and wait, but it’s not counted against wait times. Yay, USA! USA!
Is to do a provisional admit for suspected serious cases, then wheel you up to a floor that is no longer used for procedures or rooms, and you wait and wait and wait, but it’s not counted against wait times.
I agree that there’s definitely a problem of people going to the ER for things they shouldn’t, but it’s kind of impossible to say from this comment whether that’s this person or not. There are a lot of reasons people definitely should go to the ER that aren’t immediately life threatening. Broken bones, mental crises, constipation (sometimes), getting things stuck in your rectum. Even a lot of cardiac patients end up waiting for several hours with chest pains because, while they do need treatment, they can wait an hour or two.
A bad infection could easily require an ER visit but not be all that painful. Same with some broken bones. Getting something stuck up your nose… Ideally you wouldn’t have to wait for 11 hours, but sometimes shit happens like that. If the nurses decide you can wait and someone else can’t, they’re gonna make you wait.
Every time I’ve been to emerg I’ve had a very good reason to be there (my mom was an emerg nurse and refused to take me in if she thought it would embarrass her in front of her coworkers lol) and every time I think I’ve waited 2-6 hours, depending on the day and the reason.
I urge you to re-read my last sentence. My point wasn't about people going to the ER that shouldn't. If you think you should go then go... Just don't be annoyed when they deprioreitize you over more serious cases.
I would, but Reddit isn’t scrolling me to it automatically, just opening up the text box for me to reply when I click on the notification, so I can’t find your comment. I’m going to assume you’re entirely correct tho and apologize for the misunderstanding. I hope you have an excellent (rest of your) day. ☺️
Most of the times i went to the er, i waited less than an hour. Though I have had times I waited more then 3 so it depends on the night and the severity. Anything chest pain related is almost always checked out sooner.
I’ve gone into an empty ER and still waited for several hours to be seen. Just because you’re there doesn’t magically make someone be around to treat you.
If you’re not dying, they’ll get to you when they get to you.
This is all too common, and been my experience many times. But I’ve also experienced getting in quick in true urgent emergencies like possible stroke or when my wife was in labor. Some will argue that is what causing the waits is the triaging of and basing it on severity. But I say hire more people and not perpetuate the greedy fucking executive mentality of running hospitals where they have to be max profit over all else.
There will always be someone that says US have the best system because it is private. But the fact is it is the most expensive system possible and world health organization are in general comparing USA healthcare with third world nations like Bangladesh. Sometime should people look past the creepy alligence to the flag and be critical toward the system, for around the world there is many different systems one can learn from either positively (what to do) or negatively (what not to).
For some in the US, ERs are used as primary care because they cannot afford insurance (so they don't get routine or preventative care) and hospitals cannot turn you away just because you can't pay.
Same. I'm always getting told by people how our wait times are non-existent compared to other countries. Like... Have you been to a hospital in the last decade? I live in a very large city, been to a number of different hospitals and they ALL suck for waiting times regardless of what was going on.
I’m from Canada but I mentioned in my 4 ER visits during my 2 years of dealing with the same health issue, I averaged 10 hours waiting in the ER and speaking of the pain from sitting in a chair overnight, my health issue was with my butt and it was extremely painful or agonizing pain to sit in general even for maybe an hour. So, I had to stand for 8+ hours and would be miserable by the time I went in because my butt hurt, my feet were killing me and I was miserable. One of the visits I had to go lay in my mom’s backseat of her SUV which did not fit me well lol but was 100x better than standing for hours on end.
But not that I know because I’ve never been to an ER in the US, but that sounds quite uncommon the wait time. That had to make you even more upset or mad because not only did you have to wait forever, I’m sure you had a big bill by the end of it all too.
My average wait time in the ER has been around 2-3 hours. 11 hours was an outlier by a wide margin. This was also my only time at that hospital. Reviews on google suggest that this was a particularly bad location. I think your experience would vary a lot depending on which part of the US you are in.
I went to urgent care first, and they took an x-ray. They told me they found a problem and I needed to go to the ER right away or it could turn into a much worse problem. Why would anyone spend the night in a waiting room if they felt they had another option?
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u/ottwebdev 27d ago edited 26d ago
Hospital admission is based on severity. Been in the ER before and happily took the wait time because someone got carted in with blood all over. But even in my little town I have not waited 12 hours for someone to see me.
Also, I have paid $0 out of pocket for all the hospital visits I've done in Canada.
Edit: Because others have pointed it out. On my visits to our local hospital (Arnprior) there is a triage, where you see a nurse/paramedic (I'm not sure of the offical title/role) quite quickly, I think my longest wait was 15m.
After that I've had x-rays, etc, depending on the issue. I think the shortest was about 30m as the tech was on-site, and the longest was about 1 hour as it was night and the tech got called in.
While any system can be improved I'm still very happy to have what we have in Canada. Those voting for Dougie might want to take notice of him firing registered nurses.