You have no problem with someone not getting medical treatment if they happen to not have ID on them?
Why is this a “medical system” problem?
It sounds like this particular clinic had a cash management problem. As in, they don’t want to handle cash. God knows why–because they have no way to handle it? Nowhere to keep it? No way to make change? Because it makes them a target for robberies? Because if the treatment takes a turn for the more-complicated, they’re going to be talking about thousand of dollars? Which they might (rightly) suspect the patient won’t have–or, if he does have it, they’ll have tons of bills lying around and no good safe to handle it? Who the heck knows?
The fact that their cash management policy would lead them to turn away a person who is injured fairly severly is troublesome. Agree with you there.
Sounds like a clinic problem to me. However, reading your OP, this is evidence of a broken healthcare system, a condemnation of the entire country’s system. I’d probably get the connection better if you explained the national solution you think would fix it. A federal law requiring that all clinics have a cashbox and safe, and will accept cash from anyone? A federal law requiring that any medical facility accept any patient who comes in bleeding and attempts to treat them no matter what? Or free health care for everyone, so no one has to deal with monetary transactions when injured? Am I overlooking something?
Nope, not at all. Notice I said the person was ambulatory. It’s not like I advocated refusing treatement for a dying man because he doesn’t have ID. Walk in/walk out cases are another matter.
Was it a privately owned or publicly operated clinic? If private, they have the right to turn away service to anyone, finger dangling or not, don’t they? They could turn you away if you were wearing a White Sox jersey if they wanted to.
which they should.
I agree with an above poster, the health care system in this country needs a wicked ass overhaul…but not based on this story.
I fail to see how that makes a difference. I may be able to walk but that does not mean I am not in a life threatening situation. Say a man walks in complaining of chest pains but doesn’t have ID. Do we tell him wait in the lobby until you have id but don’t worry if you become unconscious then we will help you?
I also may be in danger of permant damage but still be able to walk. For example a severed finger might be able to be repaired with prompt treatment but if I spend 2 hours tracking down ID then I might lose that finger. Necessary emergency care should never be denied certainly not on something as trivial as not having ID. In this country I am innocent until proven guilty not the other way around.
I don’t think the ownership of the clinic is the critical issue. If I’m reading this page correctly, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986 applies to all Medicare participating hospitals (regardless of whether the patient in question is covered under Medicare or not).
[QUOTE]
The Act imposes three primary requirements on Medicare participating hospitals that provide emergency medical services.[ol]
[li]The hospital must provide an appropriate medical screening exam to anyone coming to the ED seeking medical care;[/li][li]For anyone that comes to the hospital and the hospital determines that the individual has an emergency medical condition, the hospital must treat and stabilize the emergency medical condition, or the hospital must transfer the individual; and [/li][li]A hospital must not transfer an individual with an emergency medical condition that has not been stabilized unless several conditions are met that includes effecting an appropriate transfer.[/ol][/li][/QUOTE]
Of course, it’s not at all clear to me if the clinic in the OP is covered under EMTALA. I’m guessing it probably isn’t.
You’re perfectly free to open a health clinic and to institute any policies you want. If you want to make it a policy to treat anyone who walks through the door with a knife wound and a pocket full of cash no questions asked, God bless you. I know certain areas of West Baltimore where you’ll be very popular.
On the other hand, I don’t see anything wrong with a clinic requiring at least ID before treatment. Even in countries that have the kind of socialized medicine that is worshiped so fervently on these boards, you have to produce ID for treatment. Let me ask you a question. Joe Crook robs my store of the day’s precedes. On his way out he slices his finger to the bone by accident. He shows up at your clinic, you stitch him up, he hands you the cash he stole from me and merrily skips away. Police track him by the blood spots leading from my store to your clinic and determine what happened. So, who gets the money? Do I get it back or do you keep it? Inquiring minds want to know.
Good point, Dave. Would a merchant’s insurance cover robberies? If so, I’d say that the doctor gets to keep the cash and the merchant gets a check from his insurance company. If not, I dunno. As far as asking incoming patients for I.D., I’d say the best practice is to stitch now, ask questions later. If he refuses to produce I.D after the procedure is complete, call the cops.
Something in this thread just doesn’t add up, though. I thought that all licensed medical clinics are required by law to service all patients, regardless of seriousness of injury or insurance status. When I did anaesthesia billing, I remember a lot of patients who would walk in with no insurance and either put themselves down as self-pay and/or apply for Medicaid later. And most of the time that was for inpatient surgery! Hell, when I busted my finger and had no insurance, I went to the hospital, received the same care and attention as someone who had the finest insurance policy in the world, and was told I would receive a bill in the mail.
even sven, I can’t imagine a doctor’s office or other type of outpatient clinic would have the facilities to handle a severed artery and nerves. Nor is it something that can be stitched up in an hour or two. Severed nerves require hours of delicate, detailed neurosurgery. And I can’t really believe that your friend’s till from work would have enough money in it to cover a medical procedure like that. And really, just why did he have all that money from the till?
I’ll admit that our healthcare system is totally FUBAR, but I think you’re either padding your story to either make it more interesting or to futher your argument (or both), or the OP is leaving some detail out.
Adam
Nope. As chukhung posted above, hospitals in the US that accept Medicare and provide emergency services must treat a patient in an emergency situation before asking insurance information. Since we don’t know the particulars of this case, it’s possible that the clinic/hospital/whatever in question doesn’t take Medicare, or doesn’t provide true emergency services - “urgent care” clinics are not the same thing - or perhaps they did not think his case was an emergency, for some reason.
I want to see how popular you would be when your policy of requiring ID before treatment kills someone.
I would also like a cite for countries with socialized medicine requiring ID before administiring necessary emergency care.
Here is a novel idea. If Joe Crook comes in with a wad of cash and a cut finger why don’t we treat him and call the cops? I mean I realize its out there having the police investigate crimes but it just might work. That way we can prevent people from needlessly dying and arrest criminals.
I am a bit puzzled about your question as to who gets the money. The same thing that happens with every other purchase made with stolen money, the business keeps it.
Who exactly is going to support the family of the man that died of a heart attack becuase he didn’t have ID to recieve treatment?
This appears to be going off in a different direction that what I was referring to.
I was not talking about EMERGENCY cases. I’m referring to a dr’s office or urgent care office which sounds like what the OP has described. They are NOT obligated to take care of you. NOT. They are perfectly within their rights to refuse you service if you do not provide ID or make payment in the method they specify as required.
True emergencies are other issues. With all due respect to the OP, I don’t believe the situation is quite as described. There are wayyyy too many holes, missing information, and just plain not quite right information to be 100% true. Something tells me the gore wasn’t quite as described or he would have needed far more than a stitch or two and would be a candidate for surgery. With the care she says he received, it certainly doesn’t sound like a true emergency but it’s hard to tell when it seems we get just a little more of the story (which magically appears) each time a question is asked.
Just out of curiosity, what sort of job has a person chopping coconuts with a machete? I realize you live in California, but if a person chops coconuts for a living, why doesn’t he know better than to hold it while chopping?
The story sounds very far fetched or even made up from my perspective. Some other information would likely make is sound more believable, such as explaining the type of employment this guy had, and why there isn’t some workmans compensation plan.
Just for future reference:
If you’re in the Santa Cruz area and you’re opening coconuts with a machete, keep this address handy
Dominican Hospital
1555 Soquel Dr
Santa Cruz, CA 95065
They have an emergency department and they accept Medicare, so any schmoe with a severed artery can walk in off the street and the hospital is required by law to “treat and stabilize” his or her condition regardless of whether or not he or she has insurance.
Even offering to pay with large wads of blood-stained cash from your employer should be no bar to treatment (although that form of payment is certainly not guaranteed to be accepted).
(In fact, there may actually be other emergency rooms in Santa Cruz that are covered under EMTALA, but this was the only one I found that I was fairly sure of.)
Fuck you. Asshole.
Where the fuck did that idea come from? Not to treat a patient because they don’t have ID?
I repeat: fuck you. Asshole.
He works for a small, basically communally owned food-related business. Cutting open coconuts is a somewhat routine bit of the workday. This coconut was too young and the knife ricocheted off of it, hitting his almost-safely-out-of-the-way hand. I know more than a few food-service people that have lost parts of fingers in the line of duty, and this is not a particularly surprising thing to happen.
He claims it was a dumb thing to do, he got careless, and it was basically his fault.
The owners and the guy involved decided to use cash (which the owner had full rights to do- being the owner) to cover the injury instead of risking a rise in insurance that would very likely put them out of business. I’m not sure if this is legal or not, but that is what they did. Everyone was happy with the arrangement.
I havn’t seen the wound, and I wasn’t there when this happened. I am going off of a written account. Perhaps he exaggerated the severity, but I doubt he would.
So if I cut my finger to the bone, in my own kitchen, and don’t bother to go to the bedroom and work my wallet out of yesterday’s pants because I carry my money in my pocket, jump in the car and jet to the nearest clinic, with fifteen paper towels absorbing the blood in my left hand while I drive with my right, and you believe they are right to refuse me treatment because I don’t have my ID? What kind of a numbnuts are you, anyway? Oh, that’s right, you’re an asshole.
Asshole.
Y’know, your kind of shit attitude is what makes life so completely uncomfortable for non-paranoid law-abiding citizens nowadays. Your attitude wants to make it as inconvenient as you possibly can for anything that might remotely, possibly, conceiveably be crime-related. I can’t have someone call me back at a pay phone because the numbers are taken off. I can’t get enough cold medicine to get me through my cold because I can only buy two packs. Now I can’t get treated at a medical facility because I don’t have my ID. This makes not one whit of difference to an actual criminal. Yet your paranoia insists that I must suffer because of the possibility of what others might do.
Fuck you.
Whoa, there, Nelly.
From the link I provided in post #58 of this trainwreck
Weirddave does have a point. In the hospital where I work we refuse treatment to well dressed white men until we are sure they aren’t paying us with money from stock fraud or business scams.
Usually the IRS will get back to us in a couple days, and we can go right ahead reattaching their finger.
Maybe I don’t understand how this would work, but it seems fairly obvious that the doctor keeps the money.
If I steal, and then spend that money in exchange for goods and services, when the police finally catch up with me, do they go through all my recipts and demand all the money back from places I’ve patronized? I’m not sure, but I’d imagine things dont happen that way.
Oh really?
Because having read the OP I came here to share a very differnent experince I had. I was in the UK under a visitors visa. About the first week I got there I came down with a nasty bug. Not surprising, foreign germs and all. After living with it for a week I went to the chemists to get a refill of the cough medicine I’d be taking. He took one look at me and said, you need more than this. He phoned up and made me an appointment with a local doctor (can you imagine thins happening in the US?). I protested I was a foeigner with very little legal standing in the UK so I wasn’t sure…he said run along. I did. Walked over to the surgery, saw the doctor, told him I didn’t think I was covered by National Health as I wasn’t even a resident let alone a citizen. He said “Pish Posh” (or words to that effect). Just had me fill out some forms, DID NOT ASK FOR ID, and told me to pay the nurse 12 pounds (cash) for the antibiotics.
Oh, yeah, and I got better. And didn’t inffect anyone else. Jeez what a stupid system they have over there :rolleyes:
Talk about a strawman. Joe Crook robs me, does not cut himself, and goes of and spends my cash at Toy ‘R’ Us. I guess they should also ID him before taking his money? How is this any different? Aside from the fact that if we all had to prove who we were before we could spend money it would be an inconvience (as well, as kind of defeating the purpose of cash) whereas being denied medical treatment before we could prove who we were might kill us.
The likelyhood that an injury was cause by committing a crime is fairly slim. But even if it were 50/50…it’s not the doctor’s job to catch crimminals. It’s his job to treat patients.