Nick Forster (Edison) 9 patients made 2,700 E.R. visits in 5 years. What is wrong here?

If you average it out, that’s nearly one visit a day for each of the 9 patients at an Austin, Texas E.R.. According to the Associated Press article I read, eight of the nine patients have drug abuse problems, seven were diagnosed with mental health issues, and three were homeless.  After reading that last sentence, some may say ……”there’s your problem”……..”it’s those damn drug addicts, homeless, and psych’s” ……… but in reality the drug addicts, homeless, and psych’s are just a symptom of an even larger underlying problem.

It’s important to note. this is not some rare coincidence. This is the norm in many major cities. This issue (like many medical problems) has a root cause along with symptoms. We can’t blame the homeless, the drug addicts, or the mentally ill because they are the symptom. We can bitch and complain about them all we want and they won’t go away. Think about this….you have strep throat…. you can take all the cough drops and sprays on earth but until you get some anti-biotics that strep is there to stay and it’s gonna kill you eventually.

Our E.R.’s are overloaded with illegitimate patients because the E.R. is free, and the law says we must treat anyone who requests treatment. Unfortunately the E.R. is often taken advantage by those that need something besides legitimate medical treatment. The true cause of all this is related to the failure of the system that feeds the homeless, treats the mentally ill and rehabilitates drug users.

Many of these people are using the E.R. (which is very expensive) to treat something that does not require an E.R.. Think about it, when a homeless person needs a place to stay on a cold night and they can’t get into a shelter they call 911. If they want a sandwich and they can’t get one they can call 911.  An average E .R. visit is $1000 dollars and the tax payers are footing the bill for that $1000 dollar sandwich. 

For the price we (the tax payers) pay in E.R. bills, we could put these 9 people up in a hotel every night, feed them room service for breakfast lunch and dinner, and give them some spending cash. Go ahead do the math. That’s arround $200 for each of them every day. There is a real problem here!!!!!!!! 

This entry was posted on 2. April 2009 at 05:37 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.