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A woman in Georgia, U.S. says she went to an emergency room to get a head injury treatment. However, after waiting for about seven hours, she left without being seen, according to local news station WAGA.

After a few weeks, Taylor Davis received a $700 bill for the visit.

"I sat there for seven hours. There's no way I should be sitting in an emergency room.. an emergency room for seven hours," Taylor Davis told WAGA in Atlanta about the July hospital visit. "I didn't get my vitals taken, nobody called my name. I wasn't seen at all."

Mrs. Davis thought it’s a mistake. She contacted the hospital to inquire about the bill and the representative told her that it’s a hospital protocol. "even if you're just walking in and you're not seen."

"When you type in your social, that's it," Davis told WAGA. "You're going to get charged regardless."

Patients pay for an "Emergy Room Visit Fee"

The hospital told her that this is an "emergency room visit fee" or "facility fee," a common expense seen on some hospital bills to cover the facility's overhead. Ted Doolittle, a healthcare advocate in Connecticut, said the facility fee is "somewhat akin to a cover charge" at a club, according to an NPR report from September 2019.

An Emory Healthcare patient financial services employee told Davis in an email that "you get charged before you are seen. Not for being seen," according to the WAGA report.

Following the incident, Davis told the local news station that she now considers hospital as a "last resort."

"Seeing that they're able to bill you for random things, it doesn't make me want to go," Davis said. "So that's not good."

A spokesperson for Emory Healthcare said it "has been working with the individual to address this matter, and correct inaccuracies that may have been assessed or communicated."

"Anyone who needs emergent medical care should seek a health care provider as soon as possible," the spokesperson said in an email to Insider. "Emory Healthcare, like hospitals around the country, treats all emergency room patients irrespective of their ability to pay."