A quick trip to the grocery store can feel like a time-saver. We may have a short list to get through, and we may be tempted to make a quick trip to the car for our weekly medicine cabinet inventory.
This is a big problem. I don’t mean to minimize the time we spend grocery shopping, but it’s time we’ve lost in our lives. One of the most common ways we get sick is by going to the doctor. The time it takes to get through to our doctor for a visit can be several hours (sometimes more), so we all take that time to avoid the doctor.
It’s a little less clear when someone’s really sick and when they’re just feeling a little sick, but if someone is feeling ill enough, you might think that they’d want to visit the doctor for a check up, not to get better. In fact, I’ve known people who were so sick they came to our family doctor, only to be told they needed an urgent care visit and they’d need to come back for an appointment.
The problem with this decision is that it takes up time where it doesn’t belong. When you go to the doctor for a check up, youre not just paying to get yourself checked out, youre paying to get treatment. When you go to the emergency room, you aren’t just paying to get a doctor to treat you, youre paying to get an ambulance to take you to the hospital.
The problem is that we don’t want to pay for emergency room time again, but emergency room doctors are expensive. We don’t want to pay for a trip to the emergency room, but we don’t want to get to the emergency room either. We want to be able to get into the emergency room as fast as possible, but we don’t want to be able to go to the emergency room.
Imagine if we had to pay for a doctor visit, but we didnt want to have to pay for that doctor visit. Thats exactly what happens in urgent care. It is called medical tourism, and the goal is to get in as close to the emergency room as possible. Some governments have been pushing for an emergency room to be built in every major city in the world. Unfortunately, we dont see such an idea coming to fruition anytime soon.
Its time to put your foot down and say, “Wait! Please stop! I don’t want to be treated with a bunch of needles and tubes!” In the real world you have to pay for your doctor visit. You can use the emergency room for emergencies, but you still have to pay for it. Most people don’t want to pay for it.
In the real world, emergency rooms are expensive, and the waiting time is way longer than they are in the imaginary world. However, in the imaginary world hospitals are all the same, a bunch of big buildings with a bunch of doctors who sit around and shoot up pills. You can get in, but you have to wait until the doctor comes out, and the wait time is typically the same whether you go in or not.
Thats why the hospital is the place I usually go when I need to run out and get a prescription refilled as I can usually find the nearest one by going to a pharmacy. I can get a prescription refilled in an hour there, while my real doctor has to do it in a week or so.
I always take the same route to the chemist. It’s easy to walk, it’s just in and out easy, it’s a little bit faster to take the bus, the train, bike, or car. I never use the underground parking lot. It’s usually full, so I use the street which is usually empty. There are some exceptions.
