I wound up very sick a few weeks ago and ended up in the hospital for the first time in my adult life. I was treating myself at home for about 2 weeks for a very bad cough and high fever until I decided I might be seriously ill. DUH!
I called the advice nurse at Kaiser and she made an appointment for me to see a doctor same day. My appointment was the last of the day, and after listening to my lungs and asking repeated questions, the doctor called the ER and consulted with a doctor there. They decided I should go to the ER.
I arrived at the ER about 6PM and was taken in for triage within about 1/2 hour.
I would like to start by saying this diary was prompted by thinking about Markos's experience with his insurance company. Mine was very different.
The first technician I saw did a chest xray right on the ER gurney in the private room I was in. Then, the vampire came in and took multiple vials of blood for tests. I was very ill by this time, so some things are a little blurry, but I remember having a nurse checking on me regularly. Somewhere along the line, they stuck sticky things all over my chest and brought in a machine to do an EKG. My husband was with me and he was never asked to leave the room. I finally sent him home about 9:30, as it looked like they would be admitting me sometime along the way, we had hungry dogs waiting at home for their dinner, and I was certainly as safe as I could be. I was able to use my cell phone whenever I wanted, although service was a bit sketchy inside the hospital.
At about 10PM, they wheeled me down the hall for a CT scan on my chest. No one needed to approve this procedure except a doctor. They admitted me at 3AM to a very nice private room. And, because they couldn't figure out what was causing my symptoms, they kept me there for 5, yes 5 days. They would have kept me longer, but I was begging to go home. During the first couple of days, they continued to draw blood and run more tests, and they had me in isolation because my symptoms indicated pneumonia, but the chest xray and CT scan did not. They ran tests for all kinds of exotic lung infections and kept asking if I had traveled anywhere recently. Nope, I am a stick-in-the mud and haven't gone anywhere lately, but they were thinking of that lady that flew recently and ended up at Stanford Hospital with drug-resistant TB.
So far, all the tests are negative. One of these tests had to be sent out to UC Davis. We are still waiting on Valley Fever and a bird-related thing (we have parrots). They sent me home with 2 inhalers and a super-duper antibiotic. The inhalers were $30 each and the antibiotic was $10. My total co-pay for the ER and the hospital was $250. Now, we do pay $400/mo for the 2 of us, and we are in a large group (retired civil service employees).
If we had single-payer, Kaiser would still exist just as it is, only it would receive payment from the government instead of various employers and private people who can afford to buy in. Anyone could get the same great treatment that I just got, without a bureaucrat deciding whether they deserved the tests that I got in a timely manner.
Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with Kaiser Permanente. This is a brand new Kaiser hospital, open just 2 months, located 15 minutes from my home. All of the rooms are private, and the staff were all very happy with the facilities (except for the computers that kept breaking down).
Update: I had a follow-up appointment with a Pulmonary Specialist yesterday. Still no concrete diagnosis, so he is running more tests. The doctor spent about 45 minutes with me, showed me my CT scan on the computer, and explained what I was seeing. I got an email from Kaiser this morning that results were in on one test, which I was able to access on line. This one was for autoimmune disease, like lupus, and was negative. The bottom line is I may get better and we may never know what this was, or we will do further follow-up if my cough doesn't go away in about a week. Oh, and he is scheduling another CT scan to check out some stuff he saw in my lungs, in about 2 weeks.