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Why are ERs in a constant state of triage, like first responders after a natural disaster, when they have also been bankruptingly high-priced and located all th

Why are ERs in a constant state of triage, like first responders after a natural disaster, when they have also been bankruptingly high-priced and located all throughout the hearts of stable cities with well-developed infrastructure for decades? Edit: The definition of triage is similar to rationing: "In medicine, triage (/ˈtriːɑːʒ/, /triˈɑːʒ/; French: [tʁiaʒ]) is a process by which care providers such as medical professionals and those with first aid knowledge determine the order of priority for providing treatment to injured individuals[1] and/or inform the rationing of limited supplies so that they go to those who can most benefit from it.[2] Triage is usually relied upon when there are more injured individuals than available care providers (known as a mass casualty incident), or when there are more injured individuals than supplies to treat them." (Wikipedia) The question is, "why are we triaging in cases where the demand is relatively stable and funds seem to be available?"

alwa 2y ago
I feel like it's in the name: just like disaster responders operate in disaster, emergency rooms operate with patients in conditions of more or less emergency. Draw from a population large enough and you'll have a rolling supply of people encountering emergencies of varying degrees of urgency—plus people who worry that they're in an emergent condition but aren't trained to distinguish something critical from something worrying-but-not-urgent.
jamiek88 2y ago
Because emergencies by their very name and nature are emergent phenomena and must be triaged? I don’t fully understand your question actually. Do heart attacks stop at a certain level of funding? Cities have emergencies all the time. Emergencies than can only be predicted statistically and a population that has got poorer and more unhealthy over time and escalating costs due to the private equity take over of healthcare and pharmacy benefits. What would you do to improve things?
toast0 2y ago
That's kind of their job. Triage patients, take care of urgent and immediate problems, send stable patients elsewhere. It's expensive because you've got to have a certain amount of medical professionals onsite to deal with unschedulable immediate problems, and more on-call in case the workload is higher than expected. And there's a legal obligation to stabilize patients without consideration of ability to pay, so you've got to bill at a multiple of the cost and hope some will subsidize those that can't/won't pay.
lurking_swe 2y ago
this is a bit like asking why do fire fighters need a hose in my opinion. Think about it. You’re in the ER and 3 people walk in at the same time, one is having a severe allergic reaction to food (anaphylactic) and they can barely breath, another has an ear infection, and another needs stitches from cutting themselves. ER nurses and doctors are _already_ treating some of the existing patients in the hospital. You have the capacity to immediately re-allocate resources to 1 or 2 “emergencies” but not 3. So…you triage. So that you can help the person who needs help most urgently first. Not sure if i misunderstood your question but it really didn’t make sense to me. It’s literally the function of an ER. To determine who gets care first based on medical need, within the constraints (number of staff, beds, etc) Of course on a slow day, there may be 0 wait time, and triage is not necessary. That’s a good thing…but probably very rare.

alwa 2y ago

I feel like it's in the name: just like disaster responders operate in disaster, emergency rooms operate with patients in conditions of more or less emergency. Draw from a population large enough and you'll have a rolling supply of people encountering emergencies of varying degrees of urgency—plus people who worry that they're in an emergent condition but aren't trained to distinguish something critical from something worrying-but-not-urgent.

jamiek88 2y ago

Because emergencies by their very name and nature are emergent phenomena and must be triaged? I don’t fully understand your question actually. Do heart attacks stop at a certain level of funding? Cities have emergencies all the time. Emergencies than can only be predicted statistically and a population that has got poorer and more unhealthy over time and escalating costs due to the private equity take over of healthcare and pharmacy benefits. What would you do to improve things?

toast0 2y ago

That's kind of their job. Triage patients, take care of urgent and immediate problems, send stable patients elsewhere. It's expensive because you've got to have a certain amount of medical professionals onsite to deal with unschedulable immediate problems, and more on-call in case the workload is higher than expected. And there's a legal obligation to stabilize patients without consideration of ability to pay, so you've got to bill at a multiple of the cost and hope some will subsidize those that can't/won't pay.

lurking_swe 2y ago

this is a bit like asking why do fire fighters need a hose in my opinion. Think about it. You’re in the ER and 3 people walk in at the same time, one is having a severe allergic reaction to food (anaphylactic) and they can barely breath, another has an ear infection, and another needs stitches from cutting themselves. ER nurses and doctors are _already_ treating some of the existing patients in the hospital. You have the capacity to immediately re-allocate resources to 1 or 2 “emergencies” but not 3. So…you triage. So that you can help the person who needs help most urgently first. Not sure if i misunderstood your question but it really didn’t make sense to me. It’s literally the function of an ER. To determine who gets care first based on medical need, within the constraints (number of staff, beds, etc) Of course on a slow day, there may be 0 wait time, and triage is not necessary. That’s a good thing…but probably very rare.