With stripmall ERs, convenience has a price. They are run by medical entrepreneurs and are popping up in strip malls across the country. They can make a lot of money because they charge ER prices.
A visit that might have cost $200 at an urgent-care center can cost four or five times as much at an ER. Many patients who mistake them for urgent-care centers get sticker shock when the bill comes, according to a story on NPR.org.
"They are usually set up in places where there are high-income patients who are well-insured and who want to see someone quickly," says Vivian Ho, a health economist at Rice University in Houston, Tex. They're not being built in poor neighborhoods, rural communities or areas with lots of uninsured people.
Read the article or listen to the story.
Dirty Floors: How Pathogens Can Accumulate and Spread Underfoot
WellSpan Health Opens Its Newberry Hospital in Pennsylvania
Cahaba Center for Mental Health Ensnared in Data Breach
Reframing the Construction Manager as a Community Manager
Health First Celebrates 'Topping Off' Ceremony for New Cape Canaveral Hospital Campus