Welcome. I second some of the stuff earlier - especially regarding sponge bath and bedsores. If you got some, you need to at least talk to the hospital about it. Unless you're 90 and demented, it should be fairly easy to avoid them. Then again... if you're bed bound at home and developing them, it's a different story.

Would a GPS have helped? I doubt the first responders or ambulance has a GPS that reads out the grid coordinates. They'd be lucky to have a street-level GPS.

Probably a good call on Kaiser, if only for insurance. yeah, they might or might not have transferred you, but if they didn't you might have more headaches from insurance.

It does kind of sound like you were a bit bossy, but not being there, it's not really my place to critisize. BTW, they would have cut your shorts anyway

Time to sit down with your family at an ARC First aid course?

its important to tell people your expectations in the hospital. You are your own best advocate.

I hope you mind some sharpshooting but I would recommend you invest $20 in a ankle bracelet at roadid.com. That one piece of kit would have solved all your problems giving info to the first responders HAD you hit your head or gone into shock.

As for the hospital care, you may wish to get a business card from every person who treats you and the name of the group that bills for them. I know there are medical personnel on this forum but from personal experience through my sons tremendous medical bills, (and quite a few of my own) I have seen probably about 8% of my bills as bogus. Such as the doctor who billed me $400 for treatment. Since I did not have his card, I challenged it and found out he merely looked at my chart at the nurses station and billed me for his consult.

But for the most part, you get individual bills from the hospital, the doctors, the nurses group, then the extras like the surgical staff (anesthesiologist, etc) and it gets confusing on who you saw/who saw you/ and how your getting the bill.

Welcome aboard.

What if you had no health insurance like 40 million Americans?

Fixed that for you, though it'd probably be better if you did it. You know, to avoid politics...

-Blast, watching

Then he would most likely have a minimum $12,000 bill... like me

Great post, really makes me think. Thanks for sharing an obviously painful experience.

He would have received the same care, but been billed afterward. If he is like most uninsured patients, he would/will never pay any of it. The doctors and hospital would eat the bill. Because of the business structure and accounting rules, the docs would not receive any sort of tax advantage for providing this free care. Depending on the state, the hospital would like receive some sort of extra federal or state money at the end of the year if they provide 'X' amount of indigent or non-insured care.

I was between insurance when my wife got real sick and had to go to the doctor. Other than the rude receptionist at the dr. office who just counldn't accept the fact that we had no insurance and would be paying out of pocket, it wasn't a big deal. We had to have a whole bunch of $ tests ran and found out she was diabetic. We then talked to the accounting department and worked out a payment plan and it took a couple years to pay it off.

Glad you came out OK, Goat. You did well, though directing a hospital ER staff to cut off your shorts is really getting bossy.



You're entitled to your own opinion, but you're not entitled to your own facts.

Exactly right duckear.