Can the er doctor tell you to come to the er only for certainf type of issues and not or the other kind of issue? can they/should they selectively pick and chose the issue? the er is a large general care hospital and they have all specialists/doctors to a

As : As an emergency physician, we are here to see whatever walks through the door. It is often difficult for a patient to recognize whether something is an emergency or not, which is why we are here to perform an evaluation of your symptoms. Once we have evaluated you, we will determine whether or not you have an emergency medical condition that requires treatment on an emergent basis. Not everything will be resolved completely during an er visit. Our primary responsibility is to stabilize patients and ensure that you are either admitted to the hospital for more definitive therapy or treated to the extent possible in the er and referred back to your primary care physician or to an appropriate specialist. As most people are aware, the emergency department can be a very busy place, and the more people that come through the doors, the longer it will take to be seen. Once you are seen by the triage nurse, the severity of your symptoms determines how quickly you will be seen. The sicker patients get seen first, even if you have been there longer. This is an unfortunate reality as patients who have no primary care physician and have no insurance often have no place else to go. While i cannot speak to the exact circumstances you experienced, it is not unreasonable for a physician, after performing a medical screening exam and stabilizing any emergent condition, to make recommendations that a particular condition be more appropriately evaluated by a primary care physician or an urgent care, rather than in the emergency department. In a society where we have fewer resources and greater demand for those resources, it is the only way that we can serve all of the people who have true medical emergencies.