On 9/9/2024 I stopped in Amarillo to get week-old stitches out at an ER facility .. got the bill today: $20,000+ [View all]

On Labor Day, 9/2/2024, I had busted my upper lip in a fall at the lookout tower in the Idaho wilderness. Went to the ER in a small town in the Idaho panhandle, where a moonlighting doc from Coeur d'Alene put eight sutures in my lip. When I told him that I'd be leaving to drive back home to SC on the 4th, he said to stop at an urgent care or ER anywhere along the route after about seven days to get the stitches out. The Idaho doc said that most facilities don't even charge to remove stitches.

So I planned my driving so that I could be at a urgent care facility in Amarillo, Texas, bright and early on Monday morning, 9/9/2024. I now know that what I thought was an urgent care facility was actually an ER associated with the medical center on the west side of Amarillo. It was within easy walking distance of the hotel where I spent that Sunday night.

The Amarillo ER doc asked me if the ER in ST. Maries, Idaho, had done a head CT scan. They had not. He ordered a CT scan, that was done right there in the ER facility. Results: NEGATIVE.

Then the Amarillo ER doc refused to remove the eight sutures because of encrusted blood in my mustache. He instructed me to soak it as I continued my drive, and to stop at an urgent care clinic somewhere down the road in a couple of days. The Amarillo ER had my Medicare and insurance info, and checked me out with no balance due.

So I stopped at an urgent care in Gainesville, Texas. They would not remove the sutures because they said it would require numbing, which they didn't do. Same with urgent care in Dennison, Texas. I did not get the sutures removed until I got to an ER in Monroe, Louisiana, on Wednesday, 9/11/24!

The nurses at St. Francis Hospital in Monroe absolutely could not believe that the doc in Amarillo would not remove the sutures. Or that two urgent care facilities wouldn't remove them. I had waited in the St. Francis ER no more than about ten minutes before getting called back to a nurses station, where it took a nurse all of about 60 seconds to remove the stitches .. without me feeling a thing. The charge by the St. Francis ER? ZERO!

So today, Monday April 28, a bill shows up in the mail from the Amarillo ER. The total for all services was over $20,000! Fortunately, Medicare and my insurance paid all but about $140 of it.

What a rip-off of the system! The doc in Amarillo ordered a head CT scan that I did not need (no symptoms, no pain, etc), and then would not remove the sutures!

BTW: The doc in St. Maries, Idaho, did not think .. based on his examination and my history .. that any CT or MR imaging was necessary. And Medicare and my insurance covered 100% of the ER visit in St. Maries.