Ann Marie Marciarille: Minutes Matter, Don't Wait!: "Or so my local 'Emergency Room of Brookside' bleats from its website but, even more oddly, from the pop up advertising that is dogging my web browsing these days...
...Yes, many are haunted by targeted impulse buy purchase opportunity pop ups during their web browsing. It is called behavioral targeting. I get it. And, I am looking at lots of hospital service sites and articles as part of research on a manuscript. But, generalizing from that, is there really behavioral targeting for using ER services? And what an ER add it is, telling me the current waiting time at this local ER in minutes.... When you click through they offer a list of all the conditions that may be ER-worthy, stressing the danger of ambiguous symptoms. To be fair, they also post an equally ambiguous list of what may not be ER worthy but only Urgent Care worthy. Overall, I do think the pitch is that what you don't know may kill you and better be safe than sorry when parsing urgent from emergent.
The curious thing about this is how at odds it is with current health insurance plan design that is trying to move the "prudent layperson" standard on current covered ER services more than a bit by structuring plans or Medicaid coverage to include financial disincentives for ER use that is not, retrospectively, deemed to be life threatening.... Anthem is making a name for itself as it rolls out these "non-emergency clauses" on a state by state basis. Missouri is among those states... surprisingly little push back—except by hospitals and Senator McCaskill—over the re-making of the standard.... In coaching its plan enrollees on how to self-screen for appropriateness of ER use, Anthem sends them to a web page not unlike the Emergency Room of Brookside page... minus the fear-inducing warnings that life-threatening conditions may masquerade as merely urgent conditions. So, there it is, two sets of troubling symptoms and the layperson responsible for sorting through them and deciding whether a fear-inducing or fear-rationalizing reading is appropriate.
Of course, I 'm still trying to figure out how the auto accident victim who was transported by ambulance on back board and later released with a diagnosis of not ER covered bruises and scrapes was supposed to have stopped all the clocks to complete their self-diagnosis while in the ambulance.
I can't help but think that this is really another battle in the epic war between hospitals and insurers over who will determine cost and control.... Anthem contemplates that hospitals will screen more stringently for ER care in light of the distinct possibility that they may be treating an individual who is going to be uninsured.... ERs are riding into battle under the banner of consumer protection and EMTALA enforcement...
#shouldread
