WOW....Lakewood medical care not cheap.

[Joe Whisman]

I have heard we have a nation wide problem with emergency room wait times. It would seem to be a misuse of funds and priorities. Look at all of the buildings going up at the Cleveland Clinic, yet when a security guard was attacked and stabbed, he had to be taken to Metro.
A family member had a horrible experience at Lakewood's ER. We spoke with the hospital ombudsman. They did not bill us for the visit and gave and apology. The ombudsman is there it take care of problems and has the power to get things fixed.
On a positive note, my son was born at Lakewood Hospital. The staff went above and beyond their duty. It was a wonderful experience.

[sharon kinsella]

Later in the, after having a liver biopsy done at Cleveland Clinic, I started to have really bad pain in the sight. This was my fourth biopsy and I never experienced this with the other three.

My kids rushed me to Lakewood, I got into a room right away, but waited 7 hours. They told me they couldn't find anything wrong and gave me darvocet. For the amount of pain I was in Darvocet was like taking an aspirin for a migraine.

Followed up with my own doctor the next day and found out I had some internal bleeding at the entry sight.

Thanks Lakewood ER>

[Bryan Schwegler]

I only went to Lakewood ER Urgent Care twice because it was on the weekend and I could see my regular doctor.

Both times the doctors were horrible. I think if I ever need urgent care again, I'd rather drive elsewhere.

[John Guscott]

In the summer of 2006, I had the unfortunate experience of puncturing and severely lacerating my left hand in a vain attempt to save a falling glass salad bowl.

The bleeding from the resultant wound was profuse, so I couldn't drive myself to the ER. But since the kids were already in bed, I had to call my dad to transport me. We got there around 9:30, but after waiting and waiting and waiting, ended up leaving around 3 a.m. (after being told it would be at least a few more hours wait to see someone).

While I was waiting, people kept on coming in with problems way worse than mine (I'll never forget this one guy with a major head concussion who was bleeding from ears/nose... yikes...) I finally left the ER, went home, and called the 24-hour Kaiser help line to arrange for an emergency appointment the next day. Unfortunately for me, the next day the dr. informed me it was too late for stitches, so I still have a nice scar from that... However, I'm glad that I left and never had to pay for those ER charges....

Anyway, the whole experience led me to thinking it is amazing that Lakewood hospital can even keep up with what is coming in every day --- i mean, this is a city of 50K+ people, . I'm sure every day in the ER is a battle, and every individual situation is a story unto itself, but those people are just so understaffed... It certainly made me wonder how the hospital would ever be prepared for a major onslaught of their services, should there ever be one.

Moral of the story: don't do anything that could land you in the ER.

[Dee Krupp]

Moral of the story: don't do anything that could land you in the ER.

That about sums it up!! I avoid the ER as much as I can, but it's crazy you have to worry about that.

I just got my detailed bill yesterday. $133 for Acetaminophen. That's some special stuff right there for $133!!! What's even better is, my daughter was never given Tylenol or ANY medication for that matter.

There are of course other charges I am going to challenge.

It's bad enough the charges are so high, but where do these facilities get off charging for stuff that wasn't even given or services that weren't provided? I would have never imagined I'd have to comb over a bill for stuff like that until friends told me of their experiences. And that's just crazy that it's more likely than not that you will be over billed.

I've got some phone calls to make!!!

[Grace O'Malley]

Dee

God forbid you have to be admitted...really check the bills carefully.

How about charges from 6 doctors you NEVER saw? I guess popping their head in, while you are asleep, gives them the right to charge for a visit.

Don't be afraid t o complain or to negotiate a lower price. I know from experience that charges will be removed and that many doctors will take a lower amount as full payment. You just have to speak up.

Good luck!

[Ivor Karabatkovic]

Dee

God forbid you have to be admitted...really check the bills carefully.

How about charges from 6 doctors you NEVER saw? I guess popping their head in, while you are asleep, gives them the right to charge for a visit.

Don't be afraid t o complain or to negotiate a lower price. I know from experience that charges will be removed and that many doctors will take a lower amount as full payment. You just have to speak up.

Good luck!

I second that, Grace!

Like I said in my post before, and Grace said in hers, don't be afraid to make those phonecalls to the insurance company and the hospital.

the stuff ALL hospitals get away with is ridiculous sometimes!

[Will Brown]

I think an ER is very expensive to operate, both in terms of equipment and highly trained personnel. The hospital I am treated at doesn't have an emergency room, and I'm led to believe that is because it is so expensive to establish and operate one; my hospital appears to find it more efficient to have me call 911 and go to a local emergency room, and reimburse for that service, than to have their own ER. Since Lakewood doesn't pay for the ER, I don't see what the taxpayers of Lakewood have to say about this. It would be different if we were paying the cost. We could then decide whether we want a local ER or not. I broke a leg at the Rocky River ice rink when I had Kaiser coverage (they too chose not to maintain an ER), and the paramedics gave me a choice of Fairview Park or Lakewood. I picked Lakewood and had good service, but then I evaluate them on the basis of availability of competent service, not whether the doctor has a pleasant personality.
Anyone who has been in a hospital should know that you are billed by treaters who don't even look in the door. How many of us have ever even seen a radiologist? They look at the films and give an opinion, but they almost never actually see the patient. Often the treating team consults with a specialist, but the specialist doesn't necessarily have to see the patient to give an opinion, and that opinion is what is paid for. Medications, such as pain killers, are often ordered, but then declined by the patient, but I believe once the pill has left the pharmacy, it cannot be returned, so you would have to pay for it. Medications are expensive in an ER, but I think that is because a whole pharmacy has to be kept stocked, but the only people who use it are ER patients, so the cost cannot be spread out over thousands of customers, as at a drug store.

To me, a major problem with ERs is that too many people use them when they don't have to, so they have to staff to that level, when in fact many people who go to the emergency room could get adequate treatment at a less expensive facility, and the highly trained and expensive staff in the ER could concentrate on true emergencies. One of the reasons for delay in being seen in the ER is that more serious cases will always be put ahead of less serious cases, which can mean that the less serious case is constantly bumped to the back of the line.

The OP here insists that she had a real emergency, and had to call for the paramedics, but then after finding out the cost, complains that it was only a couple of blocks and not worth the cost of paramedics and equipment. It sounds like she made a bad decision, and could have carried or driven her child to the ER.

To me, having an ER so close is an attraction of living in Lakewood, particularly as I get older and more likely to need one quickly. I've only been in the Lakewood ER twice, and both times I felt I was well treated. Perhaps I'd feel differently if I had a small cut or a sore toe and went to the ER and had to sit around waiting to be seen.

[Dee Krupp]

The OP here insists that she had a real emergency, and had to call for the paramedics, but then after finding out the cost, complains that it was only a couple of blocks and not worth the cost of paramedics and equipment. It sounds like she made a bad decision, and could have carried or driven her child to the ER.

Yes, I did have a real emergency, and I guess you'll just have to take my word for it or not because I choose not to tell you or anyone here anymore details than I have already. My daughter also had to be transported to another hospital and they wouldn't allow me to transport her, but Martens & Sons ambulance fee was cheaper than Lakewood's and the drive was a lot further.

The costs are ridiculous. I can't even get a copy of the ER records without paying for them.

Come on....meds should be more expensive because they have to be kept in stock? $133 for Tylenol???? That's not reasonable.

[sharon kinsella]

It is my understanding that the meds for the ER are the meds used for the rest of the hospital. This is a large facility and they are already getting a markup on the wholesale purchase of these medications like a retail outlet.

There is no justification for the 1000% profit on over the counter medication (I'm sure my math is faulty but couldn't be off by much).

Also Lakewood does indirectly pay for some of Lakewood Hospital's expenses through tax deferrals which are not available to other for profit enterprises.

Another thing people should know. Free care isn't free, it's part of the price paid for the low interest loans that the hospitals get from the Feds. It's built into the contracts that they must provide xxx amount of care for xxx amount of dollars. They used to call this money Hill Burton funds.

[Phil Florian]

"The immediate goal is to make sure there are more people on private insurance plans. I mean, people have access to health care in America," he said. "After all, you just go to an emergency room." -GWB

I don't want to get political but this IS a Presidential election season so I think it is fair game. The powers that be right now have the attitude that we already have free access to health care. Not only are they not saying this is wrong, this quote basically encourages or at the very least endorses it. This is why you go to the ER and hear all sorts of sniffles and coughs because the ER has become the one-stop-shopping center for medical services for the uninsured in Lakewood, of which I am betting there might be quite a few with that number growing.

I was out there with my wife in November. Yes, the huge bills (with our written retractions, of course) but the service wasn't too bad. The nurses were great. The doctors were nearly absentee, though. But the wait would have been made longer by a large family all coming in for medical care, none of it an "emergency." My wife got in immediately because of chest pains (which now I will make sure I use "chest pain" anytime I go to the ER, even if for a broken toe) but it would have likely been much longer.

That said, there were some genuine emergencies going on while we were there. A little baby was so very sick and needed some serious attention by a lot of folks (from the look of it). They also have psychiatric patients being evaluated there and when I was there, one guy was wandering up and down the floor calling for help he didn't need and making a nuisance.

The ED staff have to be able to handle all these varieties of needs without missing a beat. This is everywhere out there, too. My mom was at St. John's for an ER visit and it was just as bad (and when she admitted, it was worse...I was afraid to leave her there). I think it is pretty bad all over.

Metro has an excellent ER, though. Certain traumatic injuries go there first, regardless of how long a drive depending on the injury (gun shot and other violent injuries are a specialty, I think). But their on-going care has much to be desired. Ambulance drivers I have talked to always say go to Metro for the ED but get transfered out as soon as you are needing to be admitted. How possible that is seems unlikely but still..the sentiment is the important thing.

This isn't a bid for "Government run health care" but more of a look to see what can be done with the current system that would be able to capture the folks that need the care but lack the money or insurance while still providing genuine emergency service that is sorely needed.

On the ambulance driver note, I would love to see a breakdown in costs to maintain that service. Cost to include the paramedics (who aren't just driving people...they are assessing and treating while communicating with hospitals as needed along the way), the machinery, drugs, disposables and general upkeep of the vehicle. I am curious what that breaks down to in the long run. Add in that insurance, the likely unpaid bills (as noted above), again the malpractice claims and I have to wonder if they were making so much money, how come there aren't more companies pounding down the door to get in on it?

Bill Call might know, but why are hospitals having so much trouble staying afloat when they are so obviously ripping us off with their outrageous bills? Where is this money going?

[Will Brown]

I'm pretty sure the EMT vehicle that comes when you dial 911 is not affiliated with the Emergency Room. The EMT service is provided by the fire department, and I'm pretty sure the trucks are located at the fire stations.

Once we had a carbon ?ide detector go off, so I called 911 while my wife tried to find the cat. They responded with an armada of vehicles and equipment that was truly impressive, as was the response time. After they tested every part of the house, they told me our detector was defective, and recommended a better brand. I didn't ask about the smoke detector that goes off every time my wife makes a fancy meal; I just take the battery out when she starts baking or frying, and all is well. Anyway, I had never dealt with the fire department before, and for a few weeks I was checking the mail carefully, thinking there would be a hefty bill, but we never did get one.

When I had to be hauled into the emergency room, we did get a bill from the paramedic service. I assume they bill for this because it is clearly a medical service, and so many of us have hospitalization that will pay, so it makes sense that they get whatever they can to support a very necessary service.

I think our medical costs are so high in part because the medical industry, both public and private, is pretty much free to build and use whatever fancy machine they want, even though there may be a like machine right across the road. They can profit from this because our hospitalization insurance usually pays without question, if they get the right coding on their statements.

I'm old enough to remember when hospitalization insurance was very rare, and most people paid for their own care. If we were still paying for our own care, I think we would be much more careful about our expenditures; once you have insurance (and medicare/medicaid is a big culprit in this change) you don't really care about the expense, as you have at most a co payment and deductible. Some procedures are not covered by insurance (I suspect things like unnecessary cosmetic surgery) most of us fore go, as we don't feel the benefit warrants opening our wallets that far.

What troubles me about almost all the presidential candidates is that their plan invariably involves some sort of hospitalization insurance, which I believe will further increase medical costs to all of us (apparently a lot of us don't realize that we ourselves are paying for the insurance) so these plans the candidates offer vaguely are something-for-nothing schemes that work only to get them elected. I guess we don't see many snake-oil salesmen on the street anymore, as they are all holding office.

I think there is a difference between lacking hospitalization and not getting care. Destitute people can, in my experience, still get care if they need and seek it, even though the doctors treating them realize they will never be paid.

Its not uncommon now for a medical graduate to have a half-million dollars in student loans, so it makes sense that they bill as high and often as they can to earn enough to service that debt. I think one good way of attacking this problem would be for the government to pay for higher education in return for some sort of national service. That would solve the problem of students being unable to attend a good college because of lack of funds, and for medical schooling, the national service could continue during medical school with something akin to an apprenticeship. This way we could demand lower medical bills, as the treaters would not have to be paying back such huge debts.

[Dee Krupp]

I have an update to post:

After calling to see if I can get some type of discount for paying my $1,500+ ER bill (after insurance payment) in full, the woman on the phone offered me a 15% discount. Then I noticed something on the back of my bill with income levels for another type of financial assistance. When I inquired, she asked me my income and I was sent a financial aid application. To my surprise, the income levels were surprisingly high.

I just received a new bill yesterday. I was approved for a 75% discount, bringing my new total to $389.

I'm much happier.