Preventative medicine

Hospital emergency rooms are no place for getting your cold or stomachache treated if they're garden variety illnesses. The waits are long, the costs high. But many thousands of people do, clogging ERs for basic care that could be provided by a private physician.

At Southeast Missouri Hospital, the number of ER visits has more than doubled in the past 15 years.

Both Southeast Missouri Hospital and Saint Francis Medical Center offer clinics for people who need basic care. Private medical clinics that offer the same walk-in services are not open after hours. Because people who are uninsured or under-insured often wait until they are extremely sick before seeing a doctor, a visit to an emergency room sometimes is the patient's only option.

Many of those visits are by people who lack health insurance. Last year, Southeast Missouri Hospital lost $15 million in services rendered to patients who never paid. That expense is passed on to everyone else in the form of higher medical costs.

The Community Caring Council Primary Coalition wants to ease this situation. A campaign is being planned to educate people about local clinics -- Cross Trails Medical Center, River City Clinic and Midtown Clinic -- that provide cost-effective primary care that can help prevent visits to hospital clinics and ERs. They accept most insurance, Medicare and Medicaid and charge uninsured patients a sliding fee.

Preventive medicine saves everyone money and time.