Procedure for Providing Healthcare to a Patient Without Insurance

You've hurt yourself and are heading to the hospital emergency room or urgent care center in a quest to get needed attention. Suddenly, you realize you no longer have health insurance, having lost coverage when your company went bankrupt and closed its doors. Fortunately, finding quality health care for a patient without insurance is a possibility with more options available than you might think.

Walk-in Care

• Patients who aren't in need of emergency or urgent care can often get walk-in or non-urgent care at select facilities around the country. Federally funded health care centers provide both wellness and sick patient care by offering the following services: wellness checkups; treatment for illnesses; pregnancy care; immunization and checkups for children; prescriptions drugs and dental care; and substance abuse and mental health care if needed. Visit www.findahealthcenter.hrsa.gov to find a clinic near you.

Urgent Care

• Thanks to a law that has been on the books since 1986, patients without insurance coverage cannot be denied assistance in the emergency room. The law applies to hospitals that accept Medicare, which includes most every hospital in the nation.

  "Patient dumping" was a widespread practice utilized by some hospitals before the law went into effect, which meant that they could and would deny coverage to people without sufficient health insurance. Now, affected hospitals must provide screening, emergency care and appropriate transfers to another facility if needed. That latter category means that if you visit an emergency room, you cannot be moved to another facility until your condition has been stabilized. Of course, if you insist on being transferred to another hospital or your doctor believes that it would be in your best interests to get help elsewhere, you can be moved as long as you understand the risks involved.

  If you go to an emergency room and your condition isn't an emergency, that facility does not have to treat you. You may be referred to your own doctor or to a community health clinic for care.

Warning

• Though the patient-dumping law is on the books, numerous violations have been discovered and reported through the years. Public interest groups such as Citizens Action at www.citizen.org have spotlighted numerous cases where patients did not get the care they needed when going to a hospital emergency room. Last, find out from your state's department of health what state laws are on the books to protect your rights, mandates that go beyond federal requirements.