Do you think US hospitals are inefficient?

This is usually the problem in most hospitals. In my country, it is the same. Nurses are there in the emergency room but the doctor is now where to be located. This is always the situation because only one doctor is responsible for the whole hospital. Sometimes they are attending to other patients. I think doctors are a hand full compared to the number of patients needing their help.

I know that sometimes there might only be a few people in the waiting room, but how many people were in the treatment areas? It is possible that there was someone brought in by ambulance that was being treated and there aren't always many physicians on duty in an emergency room so the worst cases are treated first. I was in the emergency room in January and there were often times that the doctor had to leave me to go deal with other patients. I think that the triage is generally done well so if you aren't in serious condition, you might have to wait longer. I'm sure if it turned out that your friend had a life threatening emergency, she would have been treated right away.

Well if you are here in my place you could meet a much worse situation here. I have heard that there are patients not accepted by the hospital after knowing they do not have the money to pay for the patient and they are asked to go to a public hospital to be accomodated. Since most public hospitals are very crowded then you have to be placed to wait for your turn to be attended to. I have not been into your place but I have some relatives who lives there and they really appreciated the services that your hospitals does there. They have experience worst experience here and they see that US hospitals are far more better than where we are.

We live in a smaller community and don't have the wait like I hear about in the larger cities...in my town almost everyone knows each other..and that is a good thing most of the time including when you have to go to the hospital!

I have an experience with a US hopspital as well. My son was really fussy after he was born, when we left the hosptial the first day, he was really unhappy at night, he screamed, he yelled and wouldn't stop so we thought he was in pain with his circumsition so we went to the emergency room, he kept screaming and we waited andwaited and waited at the emergnecy room, the guy asked us eight thousand question, I was like can we just go in first, takecare of myson, then I give you information??? So we went throught that, we still had to wait.... but what I saw is allof the staff in the emergency was chitchatting to each other, hanging out...I was so mad and that was 4 o'clockin the morning! What even made me mad was the emergnecy room people seemed not to know how to deal with a newborn bayb, they don'tknow how to check the blood pressure, was scared taking off his diaper... geez...

It's the same here. Hospitals are usually overloaded with many many patients. We're very up set. But we can't do any things in this case. We must wait for doctors.

No, if you have a good HMO or a good PPO, then your fine. If you don't, then you might not get the care and service that you need. Health care is a business in America. If you have money, you get the greatest care in the world, if you don't, then you get inefficient care. I have an insurance company that considered one of the best in the nation, and I have rarely had any problems with them.

I don't think waiting an hour to see the doctor is that inefficient. Your friend had a fever and "felt very bad" but that isn't an emergency. An emergency is having your finger cut off. The nurses assigns the priority and she obviously felt your friends illness was a low priority.

Most hospital do really take that long to attend to patients unless one is being sent to the A&E department by an ambulance and they shall be placed in priority. If not, be prepared to wait because there are always people who prefer to visit hospitals for any common ailments such as flu and fever, while not wanting to visit clinics. Out of the few times i went to the hospital with my friends, that's what i saw from their prescriptions.

I dont know about US but in my country the hospitals are inefficient...