My husband recently went to the MultiCare emergency room — twice, once due to failure of the treatment at the Urgent Care — and when we first arrived they had us sign paperwork.

One of the forms says that we may have a doctor that is not a MultiCare employee.

That was OK with us so long as they are competent doctor.

What that really meant was that the doctor would most likely not be in our  health insurance network. It turns out that they contract out for all of their ER doctors from what they told us and their doctors are not in the Boeing Network for health insurance — and probably not yours either.

The bottom line is that in this day and age of high deductibles, by going to MultiCare’s ER, you are very likely to not have much of the doctor’s portion of the bill covered due to out of network issues. This is so wrong on so many levels. If MultiCare is going to offer medical services to a community, they should have doctors that are in-network in their ER. Being in an emergency situation is not the time to debate with the front desk if your bill is going to be covered by your insurance company.

I hope that Multicare addresses this issue sooner than later! Otherwise, be informed and choose your ER carefully. There is no guarantee that Valley does anything different, so you may want to investigate before you are in an emergency situation!

Karen Evans

Maple Valley