Of more than 119 million visits to U.S. emergency departments each year, about 1.5 million end with patients leaving against medical advice, often because they're worried about costs, doctors say.
Even as rising unemployment strips people of health insurance, sending many to emergency departments for care, doctors on the front lines say the lingering recession is also prompting an unexpected outcome.
More patients, they say, are refusing potentially costly procedures ranging from tests to confirm heart attacks to overnight stays to monitor dangerous infections.
Increasingly, such cases are raising ethical dilemmas for doctors, forcing them either to persuade patients to agree to treatment or else to discharge them “against medical advice.” That’s a formal designation that signifies a patient is knowingly disregarding a doctor’s guidelines.
About 119.2 million visits were logged in U.S. emergency departments in 2006, according to a report last year by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of those, about 1.5 million, or 1.3 percent, ended with discharges against medical advice, or AMA. Doctors believe those numbers are both underreported and growing.
And you bitches in Europe take your health care for granted!
I think my mama delivered me in the parking lot of the hospital when they told her the fees.
Snatching out your own umbilical cord is the new depression!!!
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