ER physicians are shocked that patients who are uninsured are more likely to die from traumatic injuries than those who are insured.
In Emergency rooms it is mandatory to care for all patients despite their possible lack of insurance, however, researchers reported in Archives of Surgery that, “An analysis of 687,091 patients who visited trauma centers nationwide between 2002 and 2006 found that the odds of dying following an accidental injury were almost twice as high for the uninsured than for patients with private insurance.”
If you are one of the many who are uninsured, visit PriceDoc to compare prices of doctors in your local area.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I seriously doubt that ER physicians are shocked. This has been well known in the medical community for years. The reason isn’t so much quality of care as the uninsured wait longer before coming to the emergency room. Unfortunately, the longer wait allows their problem to get much worse, making treatment harder and less successful.
That’s a good observation. Is this something you’ve experienced personally in the ER? It seems the uninsured don’t realize they’re going to be taken care of.
I think we make streotypes on all uninsured that are inaccurate. There are 2 types of uninsured in the ER (maybe more if you have any input). I think you are both right about 1 kind. That is the upstanding citizen that is cost concious and waits to long to go in. This is the crowd that doesn’t want a bill they can’t pay and has to be told by a loved one that they need to go to the ER. If they just went to a doctors office in the beginning for there (non emergent) needs like the flu etc then they would spend oodles less. These people need to be educated and they could circumvent costs as well as larger health issues. However there is another brand of ER user in this country that is a problem to cost containment as well as Hospital pricing transparency. That is the uninsured that use the ER as their primary care source. They have the flu so they purposely go to the ER where payment arrangments are not made at the front desk and then they hide from the bills for 30-60 days until hospitals offer 65% reduction to the bill and even then a large percentage do not EVER pay the bill. I read an article once that actually told people with financial issues to not pay their medical bills as they are least likely to send you to collections. I think that says somthing about the publics opinion of taking responibility for their own healthcare. I need it now! but I will not pay later. Try that with a mechanic!
Sherry L. Krueger
Have any of you ever been uninsured?
It’s really quite simple. Without insurance you don’t want to go in to see the Dr.; it costs too much money. So you just wait and hope, whatever it might be, gets better. Say you have a life threatening injury or illness. With out insurance why would you call for an ambulance? It costs thousands to tens of thousands for most ems services & transport, especially from very rural and very poor regions of the country. BLS or ALS.