0A friend of mine just called our office to see how long a wait it would be to be seen with a swollen eye. His diagnosis is simple enough, I could have made it over the phone. He is waiting in line right now at a local Los Angeles emergency room and they quoted him a wait time of 7 hours.
He is uninsured and at one of our local county hospitals. The service is absoluteley needed but the waits can be quite outrageous. Wait times in county hospitals can be up to 15 or 20 hours depending on how serious your illness or injury may be. The less serious the illness the longer the waiting time and the better the option would be to go to a local urgent care or walk-in clinic.
The ER is packed with people who would be better off in a lower level of care. The problem is that these places will charge you while the ER has to take you. Remember that the county ER will still charge you a fee, usually $75 to $100 for the visit which you must pay. Save time and money and get to you local walk-in clinic.
We offer our general medical services at $69. We offer several tests and treatments at fixed costs so that there is no mystery to how much you will have to pay. We try our hardest to get you in and out as quickly as possible and get all of your questions anwered along the way. This is how medicine should be. Customer service oriented just like everything else.
Posted on July 28th, 2010
Posted on June 23rd, 2010
The article below describes ER overcrowding which has become more and more prevalent in Los Angeles over the past several years. Emergency Rooms are required to treat all comers and as a result they very often do not receive treatment for the care they provide if the individual seeking treatment has no insurance and no ability to pay. When they become huge money losers, they close. Several ER's and hospitals have closed recently leaving a steadily increasing population with less and less places to seek care.
We are here to help decompress the emergency medical system, if only just slightly. Rather than seeking care in the ER when you cut yourself we offer the same care by the same providers and at a fraction of the cost. Service with a smile!
Here is a portion of the Los Angeles Times article below:
We are here to help decompress the emergency medical system, if only just slightly. Rather than seeking care in the ER when you cut yourself we offer the same care by the same providers and at a fraction of the cost. Service with a smile!
Here is a portion of the Los Angeles Times article below:
The emergency room at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center was "dangerously overcrowded" for more than 10% of the month of May, according to a report submitted Tuesday to the county Board of Supervisors.
The overcrowding — up from less than 2% of the time in April — drew a sharp rebuke from Supervisor Gloria Molina.
"I think we're having a real problem. This is a serious situation," said Molina, whose district includes County-USC, just east of downtown in Boyle Heights.
The overcrowding is not the first that County-USC has experienced since it moved into a new, smaller facility in November 2008.
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The $1.02-billion hospital has a bigger emergency room with 40% more beds, but 25% fewer beds for patients admitted to the hospital.
The old hospital could admit as many as 824 patients, while the new facility has a maximum capacity of 600 patients, which critics said was not enough to meet the demand for public hospital services.
Between December 2008 and April 2009, and again in October 2009, the emergency room was found to be dangerously overcrowded by county standards for more than 10% of the time.
Carol Meyer, the health services department's chief network officer, said the number of admissions to County-USC's emergency room has been steady. But patients are coming in sicker, she said, requiring more time for treatment.
Severely ill patients cannot be transferred to other hospitals, Meyer said, until they are stabilized.
In May, county health officials received a complaint from an emergency room patient who said she left County-USC's emergency room without seeing a doctor after more than eight hours.
County officials said the average wait time at County-USC's emergency room is nine hours and disputed the accuracy of her complaint.
ron.lin@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times
The overcrowding — up from less than 2% of the time in April — drew a sharp rebuke from Supervisor Gloria Molina.
"I think we're having a real problem. This is a serious situation," said Molina, whose district includes County-USC, just east of downtown in Boyle Heights.
The overcrowding is not the first that County-USC has experienced since it moved into a new, smaller facility in November 2008.
» Don't miss a thing. Get breaking news alerts delivered to your inbox.
The $1.02-billion hospital has a bigger emergency room with 40% more beds, but 25% fewer beds for patients admitted to the hospital.
The old hospital could admit as many as 824 patients, while the new facility has a maximum capacity of 600 patients, which critics said was not enough to meet the demand for public hospital services.
Between December 2008 and April 2009, and again in October 2009, the emergency room was found to be dangerously overcrowded by county standards for more than 10% of the time.
Carol Meyer, the health services department's chief network officer, said the number of admissions to County-USC's emergency room has been steady. But patients are coming in sicker, she said, requiring more time for treatment.
Severely ill patients cannot be transferred to other hospitals, Meyer said, until they are stabilized.
In May, county health officials received a complaint from an emergency room patient who said she left County-USC's emergency room without seeing a doctor after more than eight hours.
County officials said the average wait time at County-USC's emergency room is nine hours and disputed the accuracy of her complaint.
ron.lin@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times
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Posted on May 14th, 2010
Los Angeles County health officials launched an investigation this week into allegations that the emergency room at County-USC Medical Center is so crowded, patients wait an average of 35 hours to be seen -- sometimes without any vital signs being taken -- and hospital workers fail to protect patient privacy.
Within hours of receiving the complaint Tuesday, John Schunhoff, the interim director of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, contacted the Board of Supervisors to inform them his department had begun an inquiry.
A county spokesman disputed the claim of 35-hour waits at the hospital's emergency room, saying the average wait is less than nine hours and varies depending on the patient’s illness.
The complaint, made by a healthcare professional who sought care at County-USC’s emergency room May 4, attracted the attention of the county’s top health officials and county supervisors already grappling with allegations of substandard patient care at another county-run hospital, Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar.
In the complaint, the patient said she went to County-USC because of abdominal pain, and wrote that she was “surprised to witness an institutional disregard for basic standards of care.”
Among the allegations:
* Patients’ names were posted on monitors facing a waiting room describing their symptoms, such as “John Doe, Penile Abscess,” while also listing dates of birth.
* The patient described seeing 300 patients waiting in two rooms, with many forced to stand because of a lack of seats. The patient said a nurse told her that the average wait time was 35 hours.
* The patient alleged that only 10 nurses were overseeing the waiting rooms, and the nurses seemed “disgruntled and overwhelmed.”
* The patient said she waited eight hours before deciding to seek treatment at another hospital, and in that time, no nurse took her vital signs, a practice she alleged put patients in danger.
“If this could be substantiated, it would be hugely problematic because it would show systemic problems,” said Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, of the complaints made about County-USC, which is in Boyle Heights just east of downtown Los Angeles.
Michael Wilson, a spokesman for the Department of Health Services, said the agency has continued making improvements in county-run emergency rooms “by reducing waiting times, increasing patient throughput, and completing timely medical screen exams.”
County-USC moved into a newer, smaller facility in 2008, and skeptics have complained about the fewer number of beds – a drop of more than 25% from the old facility.
The reduction in beds forced the county in 2008 to transfer some patients to another county hospital in Downey.
In November 2009, County-USC made an agreement to transfer some poor patients to Silver Lake Medical Center. County-USC also has arrangements to transfer Medi-Cal patients to private hospitals when there are no available inpatient beds.
-- Rong-Gong Lin II and Molly Hennessy-Fiske
Within hours of receiving the complaint Tuesday, John Schunhoff, the interim director of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, contacted the Board of Supervisors to inform them his department had begun an inquiry.
A county spokesman disputed the claim of 35-hour waits at the hospital's emergency room, saying the average wait is less than nine hours and varies depending on the patient’s illness.
The complaint, made by a healthcare professional who sought care at County-USC’s emergency room May 4, attracted the attention of the county’s top health officials and county supervisors already grappling with allegations of substandard patient care at another county-run hospital, Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar.
In the complaint, the patient said she went to County-USC because of abdominal pain, and wrote that she was “surprised to witness an institutional disregard for basic standards of care.”
Among the allegations:
* Patients’ names were posted on monitors facing a waiting room describing their symptoms, such as “John Doe, Penile Abscess,” while also listing dates of birth.
* The patient described seeing 300 patients waiting in two rooms, with many forced to stand because of a lack of seats. The patient said a nurse told her that the average wait time was 35 hours.
* The patient alleged that only 10 nurses were overseeing the waiting rooms, and the nurses seemed “disgruntled and overwhelmed.”
* The patient said she waited eight hours before deciding to seek treatment at another hospital, and in that time, no nurse took her vital signs, a practice she alleged put patients in danger.
“If this could be substantiated, it would be hugely problematic because it would show systemic problems,” said Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, of the complaints made about County-USC, which is in Boyle Heights just east of downtown Los Angeles.
Michael Wilson, a spokesman for the Department of Health Services, said the agency has continued making improvements in county-run emergency rooms “by reducing waiting times, increasing patient throughput, and completing timely medical screen exams.”
County-USC moved into a newer, smaller facility in 2008, and skeptics have complained about the fewer number of beds – a drop of more than 25% from the old facility.
The reduction in beds forced the county in 2008 to transfer some patients to another county hospital in Downey.
In November 2009, County-USC made an agreement to transfer some poor patients to Silver Lake Medical Center. County-USC also has arrangements to transfer Medi-Cal patients to private hospitals when there are no available inpatient beds.
-- Rong-Gong Lin II and Molly Hennessy-Fiske
by Hollywood Walk In on April 16th, 2010
A large part of a patients anxiety about seeking medical care lies in the fact that they have no idea how much it is going to cost. It could be $200 or $2000 but who really knows what the doctor will order or how much these tests cost. This leads to patient delays in seeking healthcare with, sometimes, grave results. The article below describes just this.
We offer our healthcare at set prices like a restaru
We offer our healthcare at set prices like a restaru
Patients without health insurance, and those who are insured but fear the cost of medical care, are more likely to delay seeking life-saving treatment when having a heart attack.
For the millions of American adults who don't have health insurance, and those who have it but worry that illness might ruin them financially, the signs of an impending heart attack do not set in motion the kind of rapid, lifesaving response that medical professionals urge, according to a study conducted at 24 urban hospitals across the nation.
Instead, when uninsured or financially insecure adults feel stabbing chest pain, burning in the shoulders and jaw, or extreme pressure across the midsection, they are more likely than the reliably insured to consider the economic consequences of a false alarm and put off getting help.
That delay, established in a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., may be a costly decision for the nation as well as for those who put off seeking care. Long-standing research shows that the longer a heart attack victim delays treatment, the greater the risk of dying.
The new study included only subjects who survived, but its authors speculated that delayed care contributed to the death of many others, helping drive the estimated 45,000 annual U.S. fatalities attributed to a lack of health insurance. And patients who delay getting medical attention for a heart attack are more likely to be rehospitalized for heart problems, to experience heart failure and ongoing chest pains called angina, and to have generally poorer health.
The result: a human and financial toll on which the study's researchers are collecting data that they expect to tally next.
Just two weeks after the passage of landmark legislation overhauling healthcare, one of the study's lead authors said its findings underscored the need to go beyond the goal of broadening access to health insurance.
Policymakers must now focus on reassuring Americans that they will be able to afford care when they need it, said Dr. Paul Chan -- especially if insurance companies raise premiums or shift costs to those already on their rolls.
"I think it's a wake-up call," said Chan, a cardiologist with St. Luke's Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo. "The affordability of care despite having insurance is going to be an increasingly larger problem as the lack of insurance becomes less of an issue."
Chan and researchers from across the country and Europe interviewed and combed through the case files of 3,721 patients hospitalized for acute myocardial infarction between April 2005 and the end of 2008. Researchers found that 36.6% with insurance got themselves to a hospital's emergency department within two hours of the onset of symptoms. Among uninsured patients, 27.5% arrived at a hospital within two hours.
Among uninsured patients, almost half -- 48.6% -- waited at least six hours to go to a hospital. Only 39.3% of those who had secure health insurance waited as long.
Patients who had health insurance, but expressed concern about their finances should they need to use it, fell between those two extremes in both measures: 33.5% of those patients arrived within two hours at a hospital, and 44.6% waited six hours or more to get help.
The authors noted that more than half of these financially concerned patients had fee-for-service (a preferred-provider organization) or health maintenance insurance plans -- options that sometimes leave patients with high out-of-pocket costs when seeking emergency care. And most of those patients would be considered working poor.
"Patients concerned over their ability to pay for treatment, who delay seeking care, are putting themselves at dire risk," said Dr. Ralph Brindis, president of the American College of Cardiology, who called the JAMA study important.
In Los Angeles, physicians who treat the uninsured and underinsured said they often saw patients delay getting emergency help for their heart symptoms -- and contend with the consequences.
"I have seen people I know have delayed because they just couldn't afford it," said Dr. Brian Johnston, chief of emergency services at White Memorial Medical Center. "They require much more extensive treatment."
He added: "The guy who's been breaking out in a sweat and calling it indigestion -- that's the guy you want to get to before he has a heart attack. We will save ourselves and save them an enormous amount of suffering and cost."
For the millions of American adults who don't have health insurance, and those who have it but worry that illness might ruin them financially, the signs of an impending heart attack do not set in motion the kind of rapid, lifesaving response that medical professionals urge, according to a study conducted at 24 urban hospitals across the nation.
Instead, when uninsured or financially insecure adults feel stabbing chest pain, burning in the shoulders and jaw, or extreme pressure across the midsection, they are more likely than the reliably insured to consider the economic consequences of a false alarm and put off getting help.
That delay, established in a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., may be a costly decision for the nation as well as for those who put off seeking care. Long-standing research shows that the longer a heart attack victim delays treatment, the greater the risk of dying.
The new study included only subjects who survived, but its authors speculated that delayed care contributed to the death of many others, helping drive the estimated 45,000 annual U.S. fatalities attributed to a lack of health insurance. And patients who delay getting medical attention for a heart attack are more likely to be rehospitalized for heart problems, to experience heart failure and ongoing chest pains called angina, and to have generally poorer health.
The result: a human and financial toll on which the study's researchers are collecting data that they expect to tally next.
Just two weeks after the passage of landmark legislation overhauling healthcare, one of the study's lead authors said its findings underscored the need to go beyond the goal of broadening access to health insurance.
Policymakers must now focus on reassuring Americans that they will be able to afford care when they need it, said Dr. Paul Chan -- especially if insurance companies raise premiums or shift costs to those already on their rolls.
"I think it's a wake-up call," said Chan, a cardiologist with St. Luke's Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo. "The affordability of care despite having insurance is going to be an increasingly larger problem as the lack of insurance becomes less of an issue."
Chan and researchers from across the country and Europe interviewed and combed through the case files of 3,721 patients hospitalized for acute myocardial infarction between April 2005 and the end of 2008. Researchers found that 36.6% with insurance got themselves to a hospital's emergency department within two hours of the onset of symptoms. Among uninsured patients, 27.5% arrived at a hospital within two hours.
Among uninsured patients, almost half -- 48.6% -- waited at least six hours to go to a hospital. Only 39.3% of those who had secure health insurance waited as long.
Patients who had health insurance, but expressed concern about their finances should they need to use it, fell between those two extremes in both measures: 33.5% of those patients arrived within two hours at a hospital, and 44.6% waited six hours or more to get help.
The authors noted that more than half of these financially concerned patients had fee-for-service (a preferred-provider organization) or health maintenance insurance plans -- options that sometimes leave patients with high out-of-pocket costs when seeking emergency care. And most of those patients would be considered working poor.
"Patients concerned over their ability to pay for treatment, who delay seeking care, are putting themselves at dire risk," said Dr. Ralph Brindis, president of the American College of Cardiology, who called the JAMA study important.
In Los Angeles, physicians who treat the uninsured and underinsured said they often saw patients delay getting emergency help for their heart symptoms -- and contend with the consequences.
"I have seen people I know have delayed because they just couldn't afford it," said Dr. Brian Johnston, chief of emergency services at White Memorial Medical Center. "They require much more extensive treatment."
He added: "The guy who's been breaking out in a sweat and calling it indigestion -- that's the guy you want to get to before he has a heart attack. We will save ourselves and save them an enormous amount of suffering and cost."
This is just some place holder text so you can see what it might look like to have actual content on the page before you actually enter it. This is just some place holder text so you can see what it might look like to have actual content on the page before you actually enter it.
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