27 year old healthy woman: “Well, I had a really bad dream last night where I was watching my friend get killed and I woke up an hour ago all sweaty and my heart was beating hard so I came in just to make sure I wasn’t having a heart attack”.

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*Today’s modern ER’s will have some of the most advanced medical equipment available

So on the heels of the post from two days ago entitled “stupid crap”, comes this follow-up. Insurance companies are always accused by physicians of denying necessary procedures and care. Now related to the post from before one could argue that a lot of these tests should not be approved since so much stuff is completely worthless and simply performed for mental masturbatory reasons. However on the flipside there are some things that are so blatantly, obviously necessary that it defies reason that insurance companies would deny them. Take for example arguing about an air ambulance transport of the patient with massive intraperitoneal bleeding following blunt trauma. Quibbling over the flight transport time of 15 minutes versus 45 minutes by car is ridiculous considering how unstable patients such as these are. I realize flying a helicopter is extraordinarily expensive and do agree that just because a helicopter is there does not mean you need to use it for a transport. This does not apply to critically ill patients who need to be sent to a facility that can properly treat them. After all this is what helicopters are intended to do. Instead of spending time arguing about this sort of transport spend your time denying all of the other ridiculous garbage that will probably be ordered on the patient after he’s been hospitalized for two weeks because somebody finds out that he has a history of rheumatoid arthritis.

I hate it when RN’s grab me to drop everything to go and see a patient in distress…..and then you go see the person and they are not sick.

Pseudo seizures.
Nonexistent anaphylaxis
Panic attacks
Drug seekers doing a good job at acting.

Still, I guess it’d be worse if they missed the real sick ones so I guess I’ll tolerate the over calling.