Read the article to see the long wait times, many just give up and send to the ER room at any hospital...BD
Sometimes it all comes down to legwork by an already overworked primary care physician.
Adults with no health insurance face waits up to a year or longer for gallbladder or hernia surgery in Los Angeles County, a backlog that community clinic doctors say has worsened since the county downsized Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital last year.
Still, clinic doctors were stunned earlier this month when Harbor-UCLA told them not to send any more nonemergency gallstone, hernia, orthopedic or neurosurgery patients until hospital physicians worked through the yearlong backlog for these surgeries.
Community clinics rely on five county-owned hospitals to provide virtually all specialty care, including hernia and gallbladder surgery, for their uninsured patients.With a quarter of the county's adult population lacking insurance, patients have always had to wait a long time. But delays are growing longer as the population ages and suffers complications from such chronic conditions as diabetes and obesity.
The other alternative is to send patients to hospital emergency rooms. That's what Dr. Rachna Gupta, chief medical officer for the South Bay Family Healthcare Center, did when a young man came to her Inglewood clinic doubled over in pain from an inflamed gallbladder.
Uninsured adults face yearlong delays for some surgeries - Los Angeles Times
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