9 patients made nearly 2,700 ER visits in Texas

that's outrageous.

I think because they don't have insurance right? they would have to go through the ER to get any service?
 
Eight of the nine patients have drug abuse problems, seven were diagnosed with mental health issues and three were homeless.
Click to expand...

Why am I not surprised...
 
[quote name='javeryh']I call bullshit. That's once a week per person for 6 straight years.[/quote]

it sounds excessive to me as well but with hypocondriacs (spelling) anything is possible
 
A month ago, my mother in law made four ambulance trips to the ER in a week and was released each day.

If only she could afford car insurance ...
 
[quote name='javeryh']I call bullshit. That's once a week per person for 6 straight years.[/QUOTE]

Trust me, it's not that far-fetched at all. Every hospital ER has their "frequent fliers."
 
[quote name='gobz']it sounds excessive to me as well but with hypocondriacs (spelling) anything is possible[/quote]

You aren't kidding.

My coworkers doctor wife got fucked by this very thing.

This old lady came in every goddamn week with some BS symptoms and his wife always ran the tests and paid attention (so the old lady kept coming back for the free attention).

Eventually the old lady died of old age, and the daughter sued for negligence. His family got stuck in the midwest.

The healthcare system is so unbelievably screwed up, we hate it, doctors hate it, the only ones loving life are the lawyers.

How come when massive layoffs happen the lawyers always seem to miss the worst of the cuts.
 
One word: Dilaudid.

People come for a hit. If we put a sign on our ED saying "hospital is out of dilaudid, please go to (insert name of hospital across town), we'd lose half of our business...
 
[quote name='xycury']that's outrageous.

I think because they don't have insurance right? they would have to go through the ER to get any service?[/QUOTE]

If someone has a mental health problem the hospital will only admit them in many states if they are a danger to themselves or others. Otherwise, they are discharged and referred to local mental health programs - but they may not want to go to those programs.

Also, as another poster above mentioned sometimes people go to hospitals to get medications psychiatrists & doctors feel uncomfortable prescribing on a regular basis, in the case of mental health benzodiazapines that get you high like Xanax, Ativan, Klonopin, etc. If you present with enough panic they will often give you a couple or even a 7 day supply (until you can get to that aforementioned program program) to calm you down. These drugs can also be sold on the street for $20+ per pill. And, if you have Medicaid the hospital visit and the drugs are free for the patient - although it still costs the people paying for Medicaid (taxpayers). So, you could get a free trip to the hospital for a high, or you can take a free trip for a 7 day supply of meds you can (illegally) sell for $300!

If they want to keep hospitals for real emergencies, they need to make the patient share some of the cost. Having free visits w/ Medicaid means that people sometimes go to the hospital for bullshit reasons (I know this firsthand) because it is free. Some Medicaid patients even threaten their own psychiatrists that they will simply go to the ER to get meds if the psych. will not prescribe them. Once again, government programs fail miserably in the end. :/
 
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Eh, this is alarmist nonsense that wants to get us to focus on the outliers than on the bulk of the users.

Sure, the per-person cost seems prone to causing outrage, but, and let's be honest about two things here:

1) the medicare budget in the state of Texas is FAR, FAR, FAR larger than $3m/year. So we're talking about a small portion of the overall cost, even if it's individually high

2) we're talking about the "high-risk" users here. we can debate over whether it's useful to focus on controlling/changing policy about them. But we can be virtually assured that we're not going to change their behavior. These are the same sort of extremely delinquent people in Marvin Wolfgang's "Delinquency in a birth cohort" study (where he found that 5% of his group committed ~95% of delinquent offenses).

3) Until you get down to the individual level in Texas, you have anecdotal experiences, and ZERO data whatsoever, about the conditions of these people. You assume their users, dealers, and people "working the system." And you know what? There's a good chance you're right. But we're a smart people in a smart(ish) society. Let's not base, modify, or otherwise suggest changes to our government policy based on what we *THINK* is the case. Until we know, for sure, who these people are, what their problems are, and if they're reselling pharmaceuticals, then we really shouldn't propose solutions to a problem we're only partly aware of.
 
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