I'm not sure where you are, but maybe the medical system is set up a little differently?
I say that because I know when I met my wife (who was used to the Chinese medical system) she was used to a hospital being the be-all end-all of medical care and very frustrated with the level of service she received... until I introduced her to the clinics and other places she should have been going to have most things treated.
If you're taking yourself to a hospital here without some sort of referral from a doctor you're generally entering through the emergency department which is set up to treat emergencies. Things that will kill you in short order. If I go in for "medication" and it isn't a situation like "I've run out of my life-saving medication and I need a dose to get me through to morning." I'm probably just gonna spend the night sitting in the waiting room. Likely longer. It'd be like putting a P5 ticket in for a team whose responsibility is dealing with P1/P2 tickets. You're gonna be waiting a while for the other higher priority issues to slow down long enough for them to catch up and run out of things to do. If you're lucky they might sneak you in sooner just to avoid blowing the P5 SLA, but even that will only happen if they're _mostly_ caught up on P1/P2 issues.
If it's immediately life-threatening, I call an ambulance. They're about 5-10 minutes away. Not the best, but that means I can get someone with a moderate amount of medical training focused on "keeping you alive" to me in about 10 minutes. If it can't wait until morning but isn't going to kill me in the next hour, I can drive or be driven the 45 minutes to the hospital.
Anything else (like getting medication to treat a condition) I'd just wait until morning and see a normal doctor at the closer clinic. They can provide basic diagnosis and treatment, and there's a pharmacy nearby that can dispense any medications they prescribe.
I say that because I know when I met my wife (who was used to the Chinese medical system) she was used to a hospital being the be-all end-all of medical care and very frustrated with the level of service she received... until I introduced her to the clinics and other places she should have been going to have most things treated.
If you're taking yourself to a hospital here without some sort of referral from a doctor you're generally entering through the emergency department which is set up to treat emergencies. Things that will kill you in short order. If I go in for "medication" and it isn't a situation like "I've run out of my life-saving medication and I need a dose to get me through to morning." I'm probably just gonna spend the night sitting in the waiting room. Likely longer. It'd be like putting a P5 ticket in for a team whose responsibility is dealing with P1/P2 tickets. You're gonna be waiting a while for the other higher priority issues to slow down long enough for them to catch up and run out of things to do. If you're lucky they might sneak you in sooner just to avoid blowing the P5 SLA, but even that will only happen if they're _mostly_ caught up on P1/P2 issues.
If it's immediately life-threatening, I call an ambulance. They're about 5-10 minutes away. Not the best, but that means I can get someone with a moderate amount of medical training focused on "keeping you alive" to me in about 10 minutes. If it can't wait until morning but isn't going to kill me in the next hour, I can drive or be driven the 45 minutes to the hospital.
Anything else (like getting medication to treat a condition) I'd just wait until morning and see a normal doctor at the closer clinic. They can provide basic diagnosis and treatment, and there's a pharmacy nearby that can dispense any medications they prescribe.