Wise use of medical resources

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2825970

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. -- Chicago Bulls center Ben Wallace missed Wednesday night's road game against the Detroit Pistons after going to a hospital with inflammation in his sinus.
Bulls coach Scott Skiles said athletic trainer Fred Tedeschi decided to send the center to an emergency room because it was the quickest way to see a doctor.


And I thought people came to see me in the ER because they were worried that they might have an emergency. It's not like an elite athlete doesn't have access to medical care in a timely fashion.

 

Is there not a team doctor -- hell, even the Pistons team doctor -- that could have seen him?

 

He obviously wasn't near Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Ill. Especially on a Friday night.

(For you non-Chicagoans, that's a major trauma center on the South Side, a place where you see a lot of TV standups about fires and shootings. And I've made the mistake of going there on a Friday night.)

 

But it was his sinus. And it was inflamed.

I've never been to an emergency room and seen quickly. The last time I waited for three hours to be seen. And what I had was bad enough to be admitted and spend three nights in the hospital.

 

Any chance this is just Wallace tweaking Skiles?

 

this is unfucking believable. as i'm sure doctalk can elaborate on, one of the (many) reasons our health care system has so many problems is that people treat the ER as their own personal physician. it's usually poor people who have no other access to health care, so when ben fucking wallace does it, it's a travesty.

 

Come up here to Canada. Doctors are not taking new patients anywhere in the last two provinces I lived and RECOMMEND going to the emergency to be seen!

 

If you think civilian hospitals are slow, Claude, try hitting up a military treatment facility. OMG. All. Day. Affair.