EMTALA and confusion around it is another common reason why patients often stay in the waiting room for many hours when really it would be in their best interest to go home and go to a clinic during the daytime. It is the main reason I try to ~break all the soft rules at night and just go out into the waiting room and MSE anything that moves so I can send it home.
EMTALA was passed in the 1980s under Reagan I believe. Good luck repealing it or revising it to make sense in our current political environment!
[0] Or appear to violate the law in the optics of some administrator, insurer, healthcare bureaucracy maintenance organization visitor, etc. In this way, in large bureaucracies, magical thinking reigns, optics becomes objectivity, and 2 + 2 = 5 .
This would allow prioritization of people needing immediate care.
Hang around an ER and I think you'll see this isn't remotely true.
>mandatory screening you can filter out
This would be great but is unfortunately illegal.