Why YSK: ERs are there to quickly and efficiently find emergencies and treat them. If no emergency is found then their job is done. It is the patients’ job to follow-up with their primary care or specialist for a more in depth workup should their symptoms warrant that.
I’ll give a quick example. A patient presents to the ER for abdominal pain for 3 months. They get basic labs drawn and receive an abdominal CT scan and all that’s found in the report is “moderate retained stool” and “no evidence for obstruction or appendicitis”. The patient will be discharged. Even if the patient follows their instructions to start Miralax and drink more fluids and this does not help their pain, the ER did not fail that patient. Again the patient must adequately follow up with their doctor. At these subsequent, outpatient appointments their providers may order additional bloodwork tests not performed in the ER to hone in on a more specific diagnosis.
If you are in the USA, there is probably an urgent care facility that you can go to instead of the ER if what you have feels urgent, but not an emergency. Ex: you can’t get an appointment with your doc and you need antibiotics. Lots of urgent care places also have an ER attached and you need to be very clear if you are using the urgent care services or the ER because the ER is much more expensive. You will need to check with the front desk person to make sure so you don’t get a surprise bill later on.
In addition to this I recently had chest pain tried to get an appointment with my GP but because it was chest related they wouldn’t give me an appointment and told me to go to A&E in case it was great related and they would be able to rule it out. The prices of them rolling out great or lung issues by proxy diagnosed it as a muscular issue that would go away with time.
