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Sunday, February 22, 2009 6:59 PM CST
LETTER: Convenient care center would be great addition
By SUZANNE FULLER, Mattoon
Wasn’t it exciting to see that the Sarah Bush system is planning to build an $8 million clinic? Capital expenditure in this gloom-and-doom economic climate is always good news. But alas, the news wasn’t that a convenient care center is being built, as I had hoped.
While Emergency Room crowding is not as big of a problem here as it is in some cities, there are certainly times when sick or injured people wait several hours for treatment.
I have had several occasions to use our local Emergency Room for treatment of my elderly mother and chronically ill grandson. Over-crowding in the ER is brought on by several factors. There are always the people who don’t have insurance or money to pay the doctor, so use the ER as a primary care facility. There are people who have insurance but can’t afford to miss a day’s work, and so must use the ER to have their child’s earache treated after 5 p.m. There are also sick, but non-emergency, people who are sent to the ER by their doctor’s office because the doctor just doesn’t have time to see everyone. All of these situations could be alleviated with a true, walk-in convenient care center.
A convenient care center would invite people to come in at all hours without an appointment to see a doctor or nurse practitioner for treatment of minor injuries and for routine illnesses. If the center were affiliated with Sarah Bush Lincoln, the insurance and medical cards with which patients pay now would be accepted.
There is another problem which contributes to Emergency Room overcrowding that will take another capital expenditure to fix, and that is the lack of hospital beds for those who need to be admitted once they are treated in the ER.
While having to wait in the hallway to see a physician in the medical pavilion is a problem worthy of correcting, it is not nearly as bad as seeing a sick child in the ER who has been given a blanket, a bucket, and a spot on the cold, hard floor near the restroom while she waits hours to be seen by a doctor. I have no statistics as to how often this occurs, but I have certainly seen it. Let’s all encourage the Sarah Bush board and administration to consider adding a convenient care center to their facilities.
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medic57 wrote on Feb 23, 2009 8:58 AM:
These things you talk about happen at every Hospital. SB is not alone there. I once saw a woman having a broken bone set in the hallway at Carle. "