Yes, it sounds strange to prepare for an emergency room visit. However, the more that you have your house and your information in order, the more likely you'll be to have a smooth experience should you need an emergency room visit some day.
What does all of this mean? When an emergency arises, you don't want to be fumbling around looking for your health card, and you don't want to be unsure of what is covered by your insurance plan. Being prepared ahead of time can ensure that everything runs smoothly when time is of the essence. Here are a few recommendations that will help with this process.
1. Make sure that you have your health card and your personal identification on you at all times. Whether you are taking a walk for exercise or out at work, you should have your identification on you and available. This will guarantee, should something happen, that the emergency team can identify who you are so that they can take you to the right hospital and contact loved ones to come and help.
2. In addition, if you have any serious medical conditions or allergies, or if you take specific medications, make sure to have these readily available. Should you need to go to the emergency room, you'll want to be able to grab this information and have it to share with the emergency room doctors.
3. Have emergency numbers by your phone. This should include numbers for your primary care doctor, the hospital, the ambulance service, and next of kin. This is important in case someone else needs to make phone calls in your home - and also for you. When under pressure in a crisis, people often forget numbers that they readily know under normal circumstances.
These are but a few of the important items to consider when there is no crisis. The more that you prepare for a crisis, the smoother things will be if you actually need it at some point.