Tag: "emergency room"

Extending the Emergency Room Rules to the Entire Health Care System

Hospitals run by government used to be the place where people who could not afford other health care were supposed to go for treatment. In 1986, EMTALA, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, turned this system on its head. It required hospitals to provide the same kind of emergency treatment to everyone, whether or not an individual had made provisions for payment.

The problems created by EMTALA are severe. They illustrate a crucial problem in health care policy: can a health care system be stable if it requires that people who do not pay be treated in the same facilities and to the same standard as those who do?

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Sep 25, 2009 | 5 comments | by

Is Emergency Room Care Really More Expensive?

I previously pulled a passage from David Goldhill’s article in The Atlantic, “How American Health Care Killed My Father.” However, the entire article is worth reading. Here is another tidbit:

Consider the oft-quoted “statistic” that emergency-room care is the most expensive form of treatment. Has anyone who believes this ever actually been to an emergency room?…. ER docs usually work on scheduled shifts and are paid fixed salaries that place them in the lower ranks of physician compensation…. They have access to the facilities and equipment of the entire hospital, but require very few dedicated resources of their own. They benefit from the group buying power of the entire institution. No expensive art decorates the walls, and the waiting rooms resemble train-station waiting areas. So what exactly makes an ER more expensive than other forms of treatment?

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Sep 21, 2009 | 5 comments | by

Hits & Misses – 2009/9/4

RAND study: Quality of walk-in clinics is slightly better than urgent-care centers and doctor's offices and a lot better than habitually overcrowded emergency rooms.

Florida pharmacy offers Canadian drugs at Canadian prices.

Sep 04, 2009 | 5 comments | by

Hits & Misses – 2009/8/17

Big Brother in pill form: a microchip embedded in oral medications can monitor a patient's vital information.

Stanford is experimenting with drive-through emergency room.

Racial gap in cancer survival explained by a virus.

Aug 17, 2009 | 4 comments | by

Hits & Misses – 2009/7/6

The average time spent for each visit to an emergency room is 4 hours and 3 minutes.

A glowing description of "patient-centered medical homes," but they still don't understand "marginal product."

Knee replacements are cost-effective. But the people who get the benefits are the people who bear the cost.

Jul 06, 2009 | 8 comments | by

Hits & Misses – 2009/6/12

Harvard's Mobile Clinic keeps people away from ERs. The van saves roughly $36 for every $1 invested.

Plant-Based, Low-Carb Diet May Actually Work. Picture candlelight, soft music and rabbit food.

Jun 12, 2009 | 8 comments | by

Washington, D.C. Health Care Looking More and More Like Canada’s

Hospitals in Washington, D.C. and Maryland must frequently divert ambulances carrying all but the most critically ill and injured patients because of emergency room (ER) overcrowding, forcing many less-critical patients to travel farther for care, increasing costs and potentially causing dangerous delays, says the Washington Post.

  • Since 2004, some District and Maryland hospitals have had to divert ambulance traffic with increasing frequency because they lacked the beds, equipment or staff for patients.
  • Some D.C. hospitals diverted ambulances the equivalent of one out of five days in 2008, and some Maryland hospitals' emergency rooms diverted ambulances at least 15 percent of the time.
Jun 05, 2009 | 3 comments | by

Mass. Health Plan: Lessons for Obama Care

With a 2.6% uninsurance rate, Massachusetts comes closer to universal coverage than any other state. Yet a study published in Health Affairs [gated, but with abstract] suggests that reform may be mainly shuffling the deck chairs:

  • Since health reform in 2006, there has been very little change in the use of hospital emergency rooms for nonemergency treatments.
  • Almost one-fourth of low-income residents said their last trip to the emergency room had been for a non-emergency – the same as in 2006.
  • One-in-five adults said they have been told in the past 12 months that a doctor or clinic was not accepting new patients or would not see patients with their type of insurance.

The rejection rate for low-income patients and those with public insurance was twice that of high-income patients and those with private insurance.

Jun 03, 2009 | 5 comments | by

Hits & Misses – 2009/5/29

Conservatives are disgusted at more things than liberals. Libertarians didn't get tested.

Woman dies after spending 24 hours in a NYC psychiatric emergency room. She spent the last hour on the floor, where staff stepped over her on their way to other duties.  Family gets $2 million.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLi_osYNsOU

Waiting for You.

May 29, 2009 | 4 comments | by

Who Goes to the Emergency Room?

Patients at the Emergency Room

 

Let's see.  Tell me again why it's good for the uninsured to enroll in Medicaid and SCHIP?

May 11, 2009 | 6 comments | by
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