After hurting my neck in the shower,
Me calling primary care: The earliest we can see you is next Tuesday
Me skipping primary care & going to ER instead: After a 2 hour wait, I get condescendingly asked: why didn't you go to your primary care?
Or you live in a country with no BS medical pricing, take 2 zeros from that value and you get a more realistic pricing estimate for places in Europe (or pretty much elsewhere, probably lower, apart from Japan and Australia, I'd say)
went to ER, they took a single xray, 5hours later doctor shows up and say "yeah its broken, we will put a temporary useless immobiliser worse than the one you came in with. here's the phone number of a specialist you can try calling monday". it was $4k for out of pocket btw. my top of the line insurance just said "we can't dispute anything from er visits".
Several years ago I was visiting my mom on vacation. I took her to the ER after I was sure she had a stroke. The doctor came in, didn’t listen to anything either she or I had to say, and wrote off her statement that she could only “see half of [the doctor’s] head” as a joke. He told her that she was fine, maybe just a little dehydrated, and that the fact that I brought her to the ER for such a problem represented everything that is wrong with today’s healthcare system. He was essentially calling me an idiot for bringing her.
Concerned my mother hadn’t improved and was being discharged, I called my sister, who happened to be a nurse upstairs at the same hospital. She came down and explained to the doctor that my mother was having a “visual disturbance”. As soon as that terminology was used, they took her for an MRI and sure enough, she had indeed had a stroke and was immediately admitted. This was after 4 hours of wasted time and an attempted discharge - simply because the doctor refused to listen and would only go by symptoms.
The doctor never apologized for his comments. While I wound up feeling justified in this case, had my sister not intervened, I would likely never have taken her to the ER again unless she was unconscious or bleeding.
I wanted to, but my sister worked at the same hospital and was afraid it might ultimately affect her job or at least her social life there if we did. So I just let it go.
That's a bit uncharitable. The choice is rarely as clear as that. It's often hard to know whether an affliction is serious enough to warrant immediate attention. So the person must weigh the risk of delaying immediate treatment against the inconvenience and embarrassment of an unnecessary ER visit.
It will be really nice when everyone has access to a medical AI that can assess these things instantly wherever you are.
Japan has a nice system: when you're not sure your issue is bad enough to call 119 (Japanese version of 911), you can call 7119 which will tell you if it's really an emergency and you need an ambulance or if you should just rest and see a doctor in the morning.
We have similar in the UK (NHS 111) - but because they're rather err on the side of caution, they usually refer you to A&E anyway.
They do seem to have some sway over the GPs though - Rather than A&E, they've refereed me to the Doctors instead. When I said it's impossible to get an appointment 111 told me to tell the Doctors they've referred me. At that point the Doctors seem to _have_ to see you the same day.
That's why patients wait days before presenting.