At the UCSF Emergency Department, doctors are seeing a dangerous trend: insurers refusing to pay for care after the fact based on whether a patient’s final diagnosis appears “serious enough.”

Imagine this: You’re out for a walk and feel an agonizing pain in your chest. You sit on a nearby bench and wait for the pain to subside. But it doesn’t.

The pain gets worse and you start to panic — could this be a heart attack? The pain feels serious enough that you need to get to a hospital emergency department to find out.

Get Digital Access and Stay Informed With Trusted Local News.

Get Digital Access and Stay Informed With Trusted Local News.

Once there, doctors aren’t sure what’s wrong, either. It could be a heart attack, or it could be something less serious. They can’t know for sure. So they run tests — electrocardiogram, blood work, imaging — to rule out life-threatening causes. Thankfully, those tests turned out normal. Having ruled out the potentially life-threatening causes of your pain, you’re discharged with a diagnosis like “chest wall pain.”

Article continues below this ad

You’re shaken but relieved. Better safe than sorry. This is why you have health insurance.

Then the bill arrives.

See more S.F. Chronicle on Google

At the UCSF Emergency Department, where I work, we’re starting to notice a dangerous trend: insurers refusing to pay for emergency care after the fact based on whether a patient’s final diagnosis appears “serious enough.”

For emergency physicians like me,........

© San Francisco Chronicle