If you've ever been to an emergency room of any sort in a city, you realize a large number of people are there for the simplest excuses, such as a minor cut or a bruise, because they will get someone to eventually look at them—even if they have no money. This is why ERs must triage patients and the excessive use of ERs for colds and simple ailments is the major reason ER costs to those who pay have skyrocketed.
I would fully expect that in a “psychiatric” ER that a number of these people, many likely on drugs, alcohol, etc., fall asleep on the furniture and floors. Big deal. The floor offers more room to sleep.
I don't really see a problem with this like what is being painted in the report. Of course a lawyer will say ‘people go to ERs to live, not die’ and the ACLU will say ‘this violates “patient's rights”’ and all that bull. Where in the Constitution does it say I have a “right” to demand you give me attention when I want it? It doesn't say a thing that would make me think a doctor should do a thing for me.
I don't fault the security guy or the others for this issue much at all. However, the guy getting hit in traffic and then ignored by passersby in the snip of video attached to the report, does really bother me. There is no reason to believe an elderly man chose to sleep in the middle of a busy street.
Yeah. If anyone had seen her fall it would probably have been a different story.
I walked into the emergency room at University of Michigan Hospital once with a piece of steel shoved through my guts and was hitting my hip bone.
When I limped up to the desk I very politely explained I had been in an accident and was wondering if they could see me.
There were two things I noticed immediately when she saw the problem - being polite gets you far better results than abrupt and the looks you get from the three dozen people that were there before you. If looks could kill I was dead a dozen times over.
Psychiatric care in this country is an evil joke.. the mentally ill are ignored and left to die or fend for themselves all over the country, it’s not much better than the old days of the “snake pit”.... most of the homeless in this country are mentally ill patients who are thrown out of places that have no room or not enough resources.. What happens to the mentally ill in this country is a national shame. And no one wants to talk about it or deal with it.
And I consider myself a hardcore conservative... I don’t much care for prisoner’s rights, and I think able bodied adults should take responsibility for their own health care, but the mentally ill don’t have a choice.
When you open a hospital and serve the public, people have a right to expect that you will actually provide the services that you say you will. If they are not going to provide the service, they should close the place down. This has nothing to do with what services they SHOULD be providing and everything to do with the fact they they don’t seem to give a rats butt—in which case they should change professions.
susie