On the TV show Celebrity Close Calls, Jewel talks about having her mother take her to the hospital. She is visibly ill, in very bad shape, but because she doesn’t have insurance the hospital turns her away. A little bit later a doctor comes out, sees her in the parking lot, has pity, and treats her.
Here’s the clip
I thought by law hospitals had to treat people in emergency situations, right?
What did she say was wrong, some sort of infection? What you have to realize is that you can be in all sorts of pain, but still be stable. It’s my understanding that a hospital just has to make sure you aren’t on the brink of death. Even then, they just have to get you back to ‘stable’ and then they can send you on your way.
Kidney infection.
From what I’ve read, an ER has to stabilize you if you’re about to die or get a lot worse. The ER doesn’t have to hand out pain medication, or antibiotics for routine infections.
Kidney infections are quite painful, but are generally not life threatening.
The clip is a “dramatic re-enactment” of what Jewel claims happened. Depending on what actually happened, the admittance clerk might have thought that Jewel was looking for opiates, not antibiotics. I suspect that what actually happened was something quite different than what is portrayed. Antibiotics take a while to work, you don’t just take a pill or get a shot and immediately start to feel better. It takes at least half a day, in my experience, for an antibiotic to zap the infection to the point where the pain starts to subside. I’m sure that Jewel was in a lot of pain, but I’m not sure at all that this went down like she portrays it.
ERs don’t have to treat chronic conditions. I’m a diabetic, and if I had a significantly high or low blood sugar, and my husband took me to the ER, I’d get treated for the high or low blood sugar, because that problem could cause serious damage or even death. I WOULDN’T be treated for diabetes as such, I’ll only be treated for the specific, health/lifethreatening problem. I’d be told to make a follow up appointment with my regular doctor, or with an internal medicine specialist, to treat the diabetes.
A lot of people use ERs as their primary medical resource, which is inefficient and costly. I suspect that Jewel wasn’t seeing a doctor on a regular basis, precisely because she didn’t have insurance.
On a few occasions, I’ve had to go to the ER, and a couple of times it’s been for breathing problems. Trust me, when the admitting clerk saw that I was having problems breathing, I was whisked into a treatment room and put on oxygen. I tried to dig my insurance card and driver’s license out of my purse, and was told quite firmly to worry about it later. The admittance person was only concerned about knowing things like whether I was allergic to anything. You know, stuff related to my treatment. It’s true, after I was stabilized, someone from Finance wanted to have a look at my card, and wanted to know how I was going to pay, but I was not in distress by that time.
Right, I see what you’re saying. The lady behind the counter made an assessment that Jewel was not in a life threatening situation and that’s why she sent her away.
And her assessment was correct, too – Jewel did survive.
Is Jewel broke now, or something? Could she not just get out her checkbook and plunk down a $5k advance for medical care?
I assume this happened back when Jewel was an unknown and living in her van.
Uhm, after the doctor treated her, yes.
Well, the thing is, Jewel almost certainly would have survived with or without a doctor’s treatment. Kidney infections (and how did Jewel’s mom know it was a kidney infection?) will usually resolve on their own. If the patient is given the proper antibiotics, she’ll get better much faster, and if she’s given pain pills, she’ll feel better. There’s a small risk that she can die, but it’s not very likely.
Being in pain is not life-threatening.
There was a little more than the 4 minutes 9 seconds of the clip, but it was made clear that her infection was life threatening. Unfortunately I can’t find a longer clip or a transcript.
Hm, I got hospitalized with a kidney infection that was shutting down their function and was told very specifically that if they hadn’t gotten to me in time I would have totally lost function and died in fairly short order.
Actually one corpsman commented that I looked like I was in heroin withdrawl. Torodol never felt so good.
[I have asymptomatic UTIs, no blood or pain peeing up until my kidneys are about to blow up. I had a nagging backache so I had gone home from work early, tried to eat dinner and managed about half a cup of rice congee and gone to bed. I called my roomie home from work to take me to the ER because I couldn’t stop vomiting. I swear I was vomiting food I had eaten a week prior. Where the hell does the kernal corn come from :eek: and how long can it stay in the body anyway…]
As far as I know, renal failure is not that common with kidney infections. Generally, the issue will resolve on its own. I know it happens, but I don’t think that it’s that common.
Hell, I got hospitalized for a few weeks after a common spider bite. I developed cellulitis and had a nasty case of MRSA. But those are not common reactions to regular spider bites.
Yeah, Jewel MIGHT have died, possibly, if she was very unlucky. However, I think this story was exaggerated until it was nearly unrecognizable. It’s just an opportunity for publicity, she heard about the show and decided to trot out her story, punching it up as much as possible.
Upon some Googling, it looks like she was homeless, had a kidney infection already, and was told to take antibiotics. However, she didn’t have the money to get the drugs. She was living in a car and trying to get by on five bucks a day. Her problem stemmed from the fact that she didn’t follow the doctor’s advice about her treatment. Had she sprung for the antibiotics (which are usually fairly cheap), she probably wouldn’t have ended up in such pain. Yes, she was desperately broke. Even in the US, people get sick and need medicine that they can’t afford. But a great deal of her problem, probably MOST of her problem, was caused by her not taking her medicine.
How did the doctor treat her, by the way? Did he just give her a shot of penicillin, or something like that?
Even if the ER had taken her in - I’m assuming they went to the ER, but not all hospitals have them - they would have charged her a huge hospital bill for using emergency services. If they gave her antibiotics during that visit, they would have cost more than buying them at a pharmacy because they’re using an ER nurse’s time and a pharmacy tech’s time for a rush order of medication.
Some people seem to be under the impression that ERs have to treat people for free, if the would-be patient shows up and can’t pay. I think that both the OP and Jewel were under that assumption.
But yeah, even though ERs will treat people who need to be stabilized without asking about ability to pay, the ERs WILL want to be paid eventually. And as Ferret Herder pointed out, the treatment will have a surcharge for the emergency aspect of the treatment.
I’m still curious as to what Jewel expected. Free diagnosis and medicine? When my husband and I have gone to the ER, if we need an antibiotic, we’re generally handed a prescription for it. MAYBE we’ll get a shot or IV then and there, but generally we’ll get a prescription…which Jewel already had.
I never said anything about free care and I’ve never been under that impression.
OK. So tell me, what do you expect the ER to do? Remember, Jewel already HAS a prescription for an antibiotic, which she didn’t/couldn’t fill. What should the ER have done? Given her ONE pain pill, and ONE antibiotic pill? And then given her a prescription for the rest of the course? Jewel wasn’t following her treatment plan, and wouldn’t follow any other treatment plan. What was the ER supposed to do?
Stabilize her; Work out a payment plan; Release her.
Although what actually did happen worked out for the best.
How were they going to stabilize her, and keep her stabilized? Remember, she already had a prescription, and that would have been part of the plan. She already had the medical treatment that she needed. She didn’t follow the treatment plan. ERs don’t hand out full courses of antibiotics, in my experience. Have you ever been to an ER for treatment? With an infection? I have.
What she wanted was for someone else to pay for her treatment, from what I can tell. And apparently that’s what happened.