In many cases, I would say yes. A massive amount of ER visits are not needed for instance, and are more suitable for walk-ins and primary care. And just in my experience my Doctor will often push for various tests, which aren't needed. I've had multiple people tell me the same. Then I've gone to other doctors that wonder why such and such doctor did that other than just to gouge.

Most ERs would be well served by opening all-hour urgent care clinics directly adjacent, and triaging the roughly 70-80% of people with non-emergent and/or minor issues into that wing rather than to the ER.

How exactly? Since it would do the same thing as ER, it would cost as much to operate as ER. The patients and insurance would win if this made them pay less, but the hospital would be a loser here with reduced revenues.

> How exactly? Since it would do the same thing as ER, it would cost as much to operate as ER.

No. The ER and its expensive specialists (e.g. trauma/accident specialists) can be reserved doing their actual specialized jobs (taking care of patients injured in car crashes, for example) without being clogged by some dude with a toothache. The ER only handles the real hardcore cases that can escalate to death in a matter of seconds, and the urgent-care facility only handles the "everyday" harmless stuff, which needs less and especially less-certified/experienced and thus cheaper staff.

The ERs should already be doing this: if they have too much toothache cases for one trauma surgeon, they clearly won’t add a second trauma surgeon to the shift, they will add a general practitioner. If the trauma surgeon is not busy putting car crash victims together, he can handle the toothache just fine: he is already getting paid anyway, so it doesn’t make sense to keep him idle.

You're just describing the triage process that already exists.

Or it might mean they'd get a lot of business that would go to another nearby ER.

Where I live, it's practical for me to go to an ER in at least 3 different hospital systems. If one of them offered 24-hour "urgent care" I would definitely go there vs the one closest to my house.

It's especially frustrating because they can withhold care if you don't get all of the unnecessary tests.

From the article

> Those behavioral changes resulted in 35% lower health-care spending than when the same employees were enrolled in traditional health insurance. Even better, the study found that employees enrolled in the deductible security plan were going in for mammograms, annual check ups, and other forms or preventive medicine at the same rate as when they were enrolled in traditional insurance. Thus, these cost savings are real and not due to people delaying necessary care in order to hoard their HSA balances.

Google “HDHP avoidance of care”, there is a million studies showing those plans are a disaster.

See: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-preventive-economics-idUS...

> Yeah, people avoid care when they have those plans. Is that a good outcome ?

Note the article is about reducing health care costs, not patient outcomes. These are usually two separate goals.