Want another perspective on why some emergency department staff are on a mission to bust drug seekers?
Read this excellent interview that reporter Jim Sullivan does with a prescription drug addict in the Ironton Tribune (Ohio).
The addict discusses how she and friends call ambulances to their homes using false medical complaints in hopes of getting narcotic medications when they arrive at the hospital. If they don’t get what they want, they sign out AMA, go home, call the ambulance back, and request to go to a different hospital. The reporter also researches some numbers and discovers that ambulance runs are two to three times higher than expected in these areas.
Oh, and guess who pays for all of the medical care provided to the “patients.”
I’ll give you a hint … it isn’t the “patients.”
Makes this Tennessee law look better and better, doesn’t it?
I liked the part in the article about how overdoses surpassed car accidents for leading accidental cause of death in the area. That’s crayzee.
I have 2500 people per day read my blog with all the drug-seeker stories and whatnot. I always wonder if anyone was ever helped by it; maybe a doc second-guessed himself giving a narcotic script for “hives” or “1/2 cm cut” or “chronic finger pain” or the 5th visit in 2 months for “back pain” or a nurse questioned the necessity for a narcotic that would have killed the patient or someone to whom he’d sold it.
Probably not though. Based on my experiences, docs only care about complaint letters and satisfaction scores.
Not all of us Nurse K. Yes, I do “care” about those things but I pretty much am unwavering in not giving obvious repeat offending drug seekers any narcs. Patients have been known to call the ER to find out who is working, and if it is me or another doc who rarely indulges the addicts, I am pretty sure they decide not to come in.
[...] that health care has literally become the economy. Add in people who like to game the system (like these folks) and the available funds are disappearing faster and faster. We’re not just talking about [...]
This may be the reason why they have instituted a $500 fee in our county for ambulance rides – I didn’t understand it at first – but if this is what people are actually doing [and it makes me nauseous to think of the abuse] then it makes sense that the $500 is valid.
Not they will ever pay it if they are this shifty and Medicaid/care doesn’t cover it – it is still wrong.
Our County tried to institute the $500 fee, but guess who blocked it?
The EMS services. They set up a cry that people wouldn’t call the ambulances if they thought they’d have to pay. The County “said” the fee would be billed to insurance and most wouldn’t pay. Whether one believes that or not is up for grabs.
Between the firefighters/EMS folks and retirees they blocked the fee.
Makes me think that “gaming the system” has got more than just druggy players.