The Rise of Standalone ERs Irks Doctors and Insurers

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http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-11/the-rise-of-standalone-ers-irks-doctors-and-insurers#r=rss

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-11/the-rise-of-standalone-ers-irks-doctors-and-insurers

After developing a chest cold and breathing problems last year, Susan Alexander went to First Choice ER in League City, Tex., drawn by its motto, “Real ER. Real fast.” The 56-year-old nurse says her visit was speedy—about 20 minutes for a chest X-ray, steroids, and a breathing treatment. It was also expensive: about $2,000. After her insurance picked up its portion of the tab, Alexander had to pay $700. “I was astonished,” she says.

Once confined to rural areas without hospitals, free-standing ERs have been multiplying in suburbs for the last decade. Unlike urgent care centers, which are equipped to treat only non-critical ailments, these standalone ERs offer the same access to board-certified emergency-medicine specialists and complex technology found in a traditional ER. Some are owned by entrepreneurs, others by hospitals. Many have gourmet coffee, plush leather seating, free Wi-Fi, high-definition TVs, and something else that’s uncommon in a standard ER: little or no wait.



Among the fastest-growing areas of medical care, standalone ERs exist in at least 45 states and have begun drawing attention for whom they do and don’t treat. Many of the entrepreneur-owned ERs don’t take Medicare or Medicaid patients or people without insurance. Delaware and Texas now compel the facilities to provide critical care to everyone in a health emergency, regardless of their ability to pay. In Illinois and Idaho, entrepreneurs aren’t allowed to open free-standing ERs; only hospitals, bound by federal law to treat anyone with a critical emergency, can build the detached ER centers.

The ERs are also drawing the ire of others in the health-care business. “Physician- and investor-owned ERs are skimming off the cream-of-the-crop patients,” says John Milne, chairman of emergency medicine at the nonprofit Swedish Medical Center’s Issaquah (Wash.) campus. “Many are glorified urgent care centers, but they still bill ER charges.”

[BlueJazz]

1. "about 20 minutes for a chest X-ray, steroids, and a breathing treatment. about $2,000."

20 minutes??? I'm sorry but I have to say this again....20 minutes and $2000.00 ?

[HiPointDem]

2. More privatized medicine. Had enough yet?

[liberal N proud]

3. "skimming off the cream-of-the-crop patients"

Who is the more greedy here?

[Aerows]

4. I thought the same thing

It sounds like they are mad because they are just getting "the little people". Health care in our country sucks because of greed.

[RKP5637]

5. USA, Incorporated. It's a scam! Home of the Greedy! n/t

[Mopar151]

6. A lot of them serve employers....

Drug testing before treatment, short dates on "return-to-work", light on the follow-up and rehab. If they send your sorry ass limpin' back to work, there is no "lost time accident", which saves big time on the workmen's comp.