Tag: "emergency room"

This is Why We Need More Jeffrey Brenners

file-206642429A 58-year-old Maryland woman breaks her ankle, develops a blood clot and, unable to find a doctor to monitor her blood-thinning drug, winds up in an emergency room 30 times in six months. A 55-year-old Mississippi man with severe hypertension and kidney disease is repeatedly hospitalized for worsening heart and kidney failure; doctors don’t know that his utilities have been disconnected, leaving him without air conditioning or a refrigerator in the sweltering summer heat. A 42-year-old morbidly obese woman with severe cardiovascular problems and bipolar disorder spends more than 300 days in a Michigan hospital and nursing home because she can’t afford a special bed or arrange services that would enable her to live at home. (KHN)

See previous post here.

Oct 08, 2013 | 12 comments | by

A Market is Emerging for ER Care

Convenience

Medical entrepreneurs are remaking the emergency room experience. They’re pulling the emergency room out of the hospital and planting it in the strip mall.

It’s called a “free-standing ER,” and some 400 of them opened across the country in the past four years.

Amenities

The waiting room, furnished with brown leather armchairs and a coffee station worthy of a spa, is empty because patients are usually seen right away.

Expense

Free-standing ERs can make a lot of money because they charge ER prices. A visit that might have cost $200 at an urgent-care center can cost four or five times as much at an ER.

Source:Kaiser Health News.

Aug 16, 2013 | 11 comments | by

Dealing with the Devil

Liberty Hospital near Kansas City, Mo., has eliminated 120 jobs this year, closed its wound-care clinic, and stopped offering free rides to poor and elderly patients. The Cleveland Clinic is searching for ways to cut $250 million from its $6 billion budget in the next 16 months. It’s already closed expensive maternity wards in half the hospitals it operates. In northern New York, Adirondack Health may shutter its emergency room in Lake Placid and a dialysis center in Tupper Lake. All of these hospitals and scores of others nationwide are squeezing services to make up for unexpected budget shortfalls — the result of a deal they made with the federal government that they’re now having second thoughts about. (Bloomberg)

Jul 23, 2013 | 12 comments | by

ER vs. Doctor’s Office, and Other Links

Do low-income patients go to the emergency room rather than a doctor’s office because they prefer the emergency room?

Patients in Medicare Advantage plans got expensive balloons and stenting to clear coronary arteries at a rate 31 percent lower than patients in traditional Medicare, and angiography procedures were 36 percent lower. But geographical variation is still large and we don’t know if this was good for patients.

45% of the nation’s nearly 28 million uninsured workers are employed by large firms, subject to the ObamaCare mandate.

Jul 11, 2013 | 18 comments | by

The Market for Pain Relief

Opioids

Overdose deaths

ER Costs

Source: The New York Times.

Jun 28, 2013 | 8 comments | by

Maybe This is Why You Have to Wait So Long

The emergency department would seem, at first glance, to be one of the more bustling spaces in medicine. With multiple patients in critical condition, it seems like it would be hard for doctors and other health providers to find a spare minute.

Except it’s apparently not that hard at all: A new study (flagged by Michael Ramlet of The Morning Consult) finds that for every hour emergency department workers use a computer, they spend an average of 12 minutes on Facebook — and that time on the site actually goes up as the department becomes busier.

From Sarah Kliff.

May 28, 2013 | 11 comments | by

ER: The Gateway to Hospitalization

A RAND Health study found that hospital emergency rooms are now the point of access for nearly half of all hospital admissions in the U.S. and account for almost all of the growth in admissions between 2003 and 2009. During that time, hospital admissions grew only 4% — not even keeping pace with population growth. But ER-related admissions jumped 17%. (ModernPhysician.com)

Why this is important: about half of the newly insured under ObamaCare will get insured by Medicaid, and Medicaid patients use the emergency room twice as often as privately insured patients. Also, hospitals are buying doctors, who will be pressured to admit patients once they get to the emergency room.

May 21, 2013 | 14 comments | by

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

At least 28 former Max Baucus aides are now tax lobbyists.

Obama to health insurance executives: We are now “joined at the hip.”

ObamaCare regulations: photo.

Return emergency room visits after discharge not counted in readmission rates.

Apr 15, 2013 | 6 comments | by

So How Well Do Hospital Employees Take Care of Themselves?

The study conducted by Truven Health Analytics, formerly an affiliate of Thomson Reuters, examined the relative health of about 350,000 employees at 200 hospitals nationwide. They were compared against the health of 12 million workers in other sectors. The results were sobering: Healthcare spending for hospital employees was 9 percent higher than in other job sectors. Hospital employees also had higher emergency room utilization rates and were 5 percent more likely than other workers to wind up hospitalized themselves. That’s despite the fact they are on average two years younger than workers in other sectors.

Source: FierceHealthFinance.

Oct 25, 2012 | 9 comments | by

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

40% of Harlem residents visit the ER every year.

Secret to a long life for men: castration.

Biden: we’ve given you free colonoscopies.

Oct 05, 2012 | 8 comments | by
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