thats not an ER. ER's have to be staffed 24/7 by an MD or maybe in a tiny rural one a PA or Nurse Practioner. I will bet you it was an Urgent Care, which can operate any time they please.
Depending on the type of insurance you have, an HMO for instance, an “Urgent Care” facility may not be covered. If your doctors office is closed and the hospital ER won't see you and all you have left is an independently operated, non-hospital affiliated “Urgent Care” facility you are screwed as, if they are not on your insurance companies list of facilities and you don’t have the money to pay out of pocket, they can refuse to see you. I could be wrong but I don’t think non-hospital affiliated private “Urgent Care” facilities are under the same rules as an ER to not deny treatment.
The hospital ER CAN’T not see you. Under EMTALA they have to do a medical screening exam. If they determine the problem is non emergent THEN they can refer you away, but they MUST do the screening exam and establish that no emergent medical condition exists. And yes, EMTALA does not apply to Urgent Care clinics not physically on a hospital campus.
FrogDad and I have lived in this town for 20+ years and have been to the emergency room twice.
Once, I went to the doctor with chest pains - made an appt with the doc, because I’d had a cold and assumed it was muscle pain from all the coughing I’d done. They slapped me into a wheelchair and pushed me across the street to the ER. I was taken directly to a treatment room. My self-diagnosis was correct, BTW.
Then, FrogDad had surgery for a hernia. One morning, about 6 weeks later, he coughed and his incision opened up, squirting blood around (NOT arterial bleeding, just the force of the cough). We weren’t sure what to do since he now had an open wound in his abdomen leaking blood. Called the doctors office, they said, “take him to the ER”. The ER was full of non-English speaking people (this IS Arizona) and I dreaded a wait, but he was seen after about 15 minutes by a nurse who said he could wait to see the doc. She sterilized the area, bandaged him up, gave us some instructions about what to watch for with the wound and sent us on our way.
I have no complaints, but we haven’t had a real emergency, either.