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Gwendolyn Stretch, MD
A middle-aged woman came to me a few weeks ago for a referral to Orthopedics. She had been seen in the emergency room, and was wearing a cast. She had sustained a radial fracture and belonged to an HMO, so she needed a referral. In talking to her, I found that she had gone to two emergency rooms. The first ER had placed her in a cast but gave her nothing for pain, despite her complaint about pain, and didn't give her any written instructions. After going back home and then back to a different emergency room, she was given pain medication. On her visit to the other ER, she was told how terrible it was that she was treated that way. Several days later she came to me for the referral. I said to her, "Well maybe they weren't finished with you at the first emergency room? Maybe you left before they were finished." She said, "But they told me that they were done and that I could go home."
I remembered a similar experience of going to an emergency room as a child. My mother took me. We had no insurance. The physician, I believe it was a physician, but he might have been a medical student, said to me, "You don't belong in the ER; you don't have an emergency. The ER is for sick people."
Yes they are, but if you have no place to go and you don't know of a place to go, that's where you go for health care. So, one of the things I did do for my patient was help her draft a letter to the hospital to let them know how she was treated and how she felt about her treatment. I think one of the things that happens to people that don't have access to care is that they feel powerless. Her feeling was that she had to go someplace else to get the services she was entitled too. I think we do have to empower our patients to demand what they are entitled to. |
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