On Fri, May 3, 2019 at 4:25 AM Nita Rae Sanders <cosmic...@gmail.com> wrote: > Please read the Wikipedia article again. While the name of an ED > implies Emergency care, and they certainly do provide it, less than > 20% result in inpatient admission. The vast majority are treat and > release. In the majority of cases, it was less than something needing > emergency response.
There's also a difference between 'requires emergency response' and 'requires inpatient admission.' A diabetic in hypogycæmic shock may well need lifesaving emergency treatment, but be well enough to go home in a few hours if stabilized. Likewise, many if not most unfixed broken bones are true emergencies, owing to the possibility of the migration of a bone fragment into an artery. Once the fracture is reduced and fixed, again the patient can go home. Similarly, I availed myself of the local ED one year when I suffered a detached retina on Christmas Day. I wasn't the current patient of any ophthalmologist, since I'd been able to make out just fine with the services of an optometrist. Raising an ophthalmologist for a new-patient consultation on Christmas was next to impossible, so I decided to make it the hospital's problem. Once they'd found one, I was able to go to the surgeon's practice with just my wife driving me; he prepared me and performed the surgery there and then, and sent me home. He assured me that the condition was indeed an emergency, with significant risk of blindness if not treated within hours. (Having been both wise and fortunate, I came through with no loss of vision.) Some things that are emergencies simply can be attended to quickly without needing to admit. _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list Tagging@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
