She Left After Waiting Hours in the Emergency Room. The ER Billed Her Anyway.

Autumn Daniels is no stranger to migraine headaches, which have troubled her since childhood. The migraine tormenting the 32-year-old in April was even worse than usual. After a week of piercing head pain, she went to an urgent care center near her home in Champaign, Illinois, and received an injection of Toradol, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug that usually helps with her symptoms. The doctor at the clinic told her that if the pain didn’t improve, she should go to an emergency room the next day. It didn’t improve. So the next morning, Daniels’ sister took her to a nearby ER, at Carle Foundation Hospital in Urbana. She said the ER didn’t seem very busy when she registered at the front desk and was taken briefly to an exam room, where a staffer checked her vital signs and asked whether she had migraines frequently. Then they told her to sit in the waiting room until she was called. She and her sister waited. And waited. By then, Daniels said, she was vomiting every 10 minutes, a not-uncommon occurrence during one of her serious migraine attacks. After four hours, with no indication that Daniels would be seen anytime soon, her sister took her to another hospital. There, after ...