Who Needs ERs?
Since 1990, the number of hospital-based emergency departments has declined by 27 percent, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in May. Meanwhile, the number of visits to hospital emergency departments has been on the rise, increasing 30 percent — to 123 million — between 1998 and 2008 alone, the study found.
One increasingly popular option to improve access to services is the freestanding emergency department, a facility that, as its name suggests, isn’t physically located with a hospital... In 2009, there were 241 freestanding emergency departments, 65 percent more than there were just five years ago, when there were 146 such facilities, according to the American Hospital Association. They’re located in at least 16 states, according to a study for the California Healthcare Foundation.
Full article on freestanding emergency departments.
I’ll tell you who is going to need ERs. The 16 million people who are going to be added to the Medicaid rolls in just three years.
Free standing urgent care centers have been around for years. I wonder if free standing Emergency Rooms have a limit in the types of emergencies they can treat? Cuts and sprains aren’t that difficult to treat. But a heart attack is the type of condition where I would want a full hospital attached to the ER.
The problem is that the people who really are going to need a full service ER aren’t going to be able to find one.