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Unfortunately, this happens at ER's all over the country. At one of my assignments, we had a "frequent flyer" who would come in drug-seeking almost EVERY day, sometimes 2-3 times in a 24-hour period. It is truly abuse of the Emergency Medical system, but EMTALA laws force ER's to see these people over and over again... One way they found of dealing with this specific patient was to triage him, and then have one of the doctors or PA's see him in triage and discharge him right from triage. Cut his visits down to about 15 minutes when he never really had a valid complaint, and discouraged him from coming back again (at least for a day or two...)
