befitter said:
If you need a real ER then go to a real ER attached to an actual hospital that can actually admit you if necessary. Otherwise all you need is an Urgent Care. These free standing ER's are a total rip off and they are abusing the health care system in my opinion.
Not necessarily. My daughter was complaining of a headache in January and it got progressively worse, to the point where she couldn't even open her eye because it was swollen shut and was screaming in pain. (She was 10.) I took her to the ER at The Med at Midnight and the ER doctor there took one look at her and said "it's a migraine' and ordered up the migraine protocol. I questioned him because I've never seen a migraine make an eye swell shut and she had no history of migraines. However, she did have a history of severe sinus infections. I asked him to run a CBC and a CT and he ROLLED HIS EYES AT ME. I was flabbergasted that he had the nerve to roll his eyes at the parent of a child in his ER. I explained her history of sinus infections and asked again that he run a CBC to at least tell us if she had an infection and if so, then I wanted a CT scan to see if it was a sinus infection so we could get started on antibiotics. He then informed me that antibiotics were not used to treat sinus infections. Mind you, I have worked with clinical pharmacists for eleven years and knew that was not the case. He just wanted us out of his ER so they could keep their wait times low for their billboards. The nurse came in and started a line on her to administer the migraine protocol and missed her vein four times. The migraine drugs knocked her out and he said, "See, I told you it was a migraine." I said I was not convinced because basically he just drugged her up to diminish the pain, he didn't identify the cause of the pain. We were discharged and went home. Three hours later, the migraine cocktail wore off and she was crawled into my room on her hands and knees begging me to call a helicopter to take her to a hospital. I called Caprock to see if they had a CT and they said yes, so I took her over to Caprock. The immediately took one look at her, ran a CBC, did a CT scan, and also checked the pressure in her eye, which was high. Long story short, she was transferred by ambulance to Texas Children's in Houston for emergency surgery for orbital cellulitis. (Google pics if you dare and then ask yourself how the ER dr at the Med could have thought that presentation was a migraine.) Her surgery at Texas Children's took THREE hours and I was told that had it been allowed to fester for another 48 hours, the outcome would not have been positive. The infection was so close to her brain tissue that they had to do a brain MRI the day after surgery to confirm that it had not penetrated her brain. She ended up spending a week at Texas Children's.
I'll take Caprock over a hospital ER any day. They listened and they saved her sight.
