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Will health reform help ER crowding?
People waiting outside of emergency room patient drop-off at a hospital
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TEXT OF STORY
Steve Chiotakis: Today starts the annual conference of ER doctors. And the American College of Emergency Physicians has a lot to talk about. One of the main topics under the microscope, of course, will be health-care reform and how it could affect emergency rooms. Ashley Milne-Tyte has more.
Ashley Milne-Tyte: We hear a lot about the uninsured using emergency rooms for routine care. Dr. Angela Gardner says that's a myth. She's president of the American College of Emergency Physicians. She says the vast majority of people who come to the ER need urgent care that regular doctors can't provide. Cutting the number of people in the ER is not the answer to cutting costs as she says some lawmakers think.
Dr. Angela Gardner: The truth is all of emergency-care spending in America is only 3 percent of the total yearly health-care spending.
She says the overcrowding in the emergency room is really a symptom of something else. Hospitals don't have enough beds to accommodate ER patients needing follow-up care and processing takes too long. She says although affordable coverage is necessary, it won't solve the crowding.
Since Massachusetts adopted universal health care, trips to the emergency room are up seven percent.
I'm Ashley Milne-Tyte for Marketplace.
Missing the point.
It isn't that uninsured people go to ER for routine care - they let chronic problems become emergency conditions. That is where healthcare reform would benefit the uninsured.
The facts about the total cost of emergency room services is interesting. So your report wasn't a total loss. But when the emergency room pro's don't make the most important point of preventing emergency room visits through preventive care, they sound like just any other special interest group.
