difference public/private ED

mvl

Something came up, and I am trying to figure out differences between an emergency department in a public hospital or in a private hospital when triaging patients ?
Is it ... level of health insurance required ? anything else ?

Also another question: how important is the geographical location when talking about emergency department - are all EDs accepting patients from everywhere in the country ?
- Assuming there is a way to find out waiting times - may be worth traveling in more distant places for the emergency, if some conditions are favorable.

Corruptedmorals

Private ED's are not 24-7, they are usually something like 8-5. They are a bit limited in what they can take, they tend not to do paediatric patients, gyno, eyes and a few other specialities...it depends what consultants they have on call. When I worked in one they stabilised extremely critical patients such as cardiac and respiratory but these patients ended up transferred to public hospitals so it is not ideal for critical either. That said they do tend to have a lot of cardiac services, orthopaedic and general surgery.

For a private A&E if you are not admitted it will be very expensive. A&E fee of 150 approx, bloods which add up as you are paying for the priority results and scans which start at about 70-90 for an x-ray and past 300 for a CT. Admission takes care of all of these expenses except for the A&E fee and your insurance excess.

Insurance dictates the advisability of admission. The Beacon and Blackrock are both high tech hospitals. A small proportion of plans would cover admission to those hospitals.

A&E departments do not have catchment areas. Neither do private ones.

Ace2007

Don't want to start a new thread, so just bumping this,

Are private ED's basically just used for walk in's, like take an example where someone isn't well and an ambulance is called, can you ask for them to be taking to a private A&E, or how do you normally go about it?