Stand-alone emergency rooms emerge in Central Florida
By Scott Powers, Orlando Sentinel | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
The off-site hospital emergency department was the second such facility to open in
The first such ER opened in
Most of them, including
"We looked at our stats and demographics. It was very clear that a significant portion of our patient population was coming from here in Hunter's Creek," Dr.
HCA, which owns both the
The GuideWell Emergency Medicine Doctors emergency room will open at
All the stand-alone emergency rooms are staffed 24 hours with board-certified emergency room doctors and full staffs. All have a dozen or more examination rooms, imaging equipment, labs and other facilities to handle nearly all emergency medical issues that could be handled by most hospital emergency rooms.
They also offer ambulance and even helicopter transportation to hospitals for patients that need hospital care.
"It's part of a broader strategy for hospitals to be where the patients are," Ginsburg said. "A very high proportion of medical admissions to a hospital come through its emergency room."
"Our goal, unlike some of the other free-standing emergency departments we've studied around the country that are more of a pack-and-ship, or treat-and-street, our goal is to keep as many options for patients there as we can," said
Yet stand-alone emergency rooms also share something else with hospital ERs: steeper prices. Typically, patients pay co-pays of about twice as much for an emergency room visit as they would for visits to doctors offices or urgent care centers, which also are often staffed around the clock to handle non-emergency medical problems.
In addition, emergency rooms may charge "facility fees" that cover the costs of expensive equipment and staffing necessary for major emergencies, but perhaps not needed for more routine patient problems such as stitches or broken bones. Those facility fees are usually, but not necessarily, paid by insurance plans, and can run hundreds of dollars per visit.
Typically, nationally, stand-alone emergency departments are low-traffic, high-revenue enterprises. Neither
That leaves some health care industry professionals cautioning that patients should not mistake stand-alone emergency rooms as the place to go for non-emergencies.
"If somebody goes to one of these free-standing emergency room facilities, and they don't need the caliber of care that is part of that facility, they are paying more than they have to," said
[email protected] or 407-420-5441.
___
(c)2014 The Orlando Sentinel (Orlando, Fla.)
Visit The Orlando Sentinel (Orlando, Fla.) at www.OrlandoSentinel.com
Distributed by MCT Information Services
Wordcount: | 845 |
Pressure to cut costs of health care bears down on union members who provide it
Advisor News
Annuity News
Health/Employee Benefits News
Life Insurance News