Tuesday, 29 November 2005
Emergency Care Strained
ERs are under pressure, according to the Center for Studying Health System Change’s latest findings.
Why? It’s partly due to a growing identity crisis. The federal government continues to mandate that ERs provide access to medical care to all individuals – insured or not. While hospitals themselves are increasingly relying on ERs to attract and admit insured people.
And as ERs grapple with this dual role, their resources are being strained by a number of factors, the major ones being:
- More and more specialists are unwilling to be on-call for ER duty
- More and more people are looking for primary treatment in ERs
- More and more people afflicted by serious mental illnesses are seeking treatment in ERs that are not prepared to help them
The outlook for ER patients if these conditions persist? Not too good: Delay in care, increasing costs, and inadequate care are all the results of ERs taxed too far.
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Posted by at 8:47 AM in Health Insurance
