You probably know the feeling: a headache that lingers a little too long or stomach trouble that comes and goes. You rationalize it, almost without thinking: It's probably nothing. I'll give it a few days. For many of us, busy schedules and the hassle of healthcare—the costs, the long waits, the risk of a crowded ER—outweigh non-urgent symptoms. We hope they’ll resolve on their own, and sometimes they do. But sometimes they don't.
In the traditional emergency room, I often encountered patients whose non-urgent symptoms didn’t resolve with time. They came to us with ongoing headaches that were caused by hypertension, cardiac arrhythmias they thought were just stress, or low-grade infections that had suddenly gotten scary. The problem was almost the same one they'd noticed weeks earlier, only now it was more challenging to treat, and the outcome far less certain.
Over my 20+ years of practicing emergency medicine, these experiences taught me that many serious health conditions could be prevented if patients got care sooner instead of taking the “wait and see” approach to their health.
Unfortunately, this mistake is growing more common, not less.