Tag: "ER"

Too Many Emergency Room Visits?

Here is the argument for keeping things just as they are:

Researchers reviewed the records from almost 35,000 patient visits to emergency departments across the country. In 6 percent of cases, the patient was discharged and could have been treated in a doctor’s office.

The researchers then combed through the initial symptoms or complaints of these non-urgent cases and discovered that in nearly 90 percent of the other, more urgent cases, patients came to the emergency room with the same primary presenting symptoms, complaints like abdominal discomfort, chest pain or fever. In addition, more than 10 percent of these urgent patients ended up requiring hospital admission, surgery or intensive care.

I’m skeptical. It looks to me like only 10% of the patients really needed hospital care.

Apr 05, 2013 | 12 comments | by

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

An average ER visit costs more than an average month’s rent.

The Queen has entered a private hospital (on Harley Street) rather than an NHS hospital; the same hospital Kate went to. Ah, the joys of socialized medicine.

Sequester will not slow ObamaCare.

Mar 06, 2013 | 13 comments | by

Surprise: Disease Management Programs Don’t Work

OK, you probably aren’t surprised. Jason Shafrin on this study:

Washington, Texas, and Georgia have implemented diabetic disease management programs. The authors use a difference in difference strategy to measure whether costs and number of emergency admissions…decreased relative to states that did not implement diabetic disease management programs…The authors found no effect.

Jan 03, 2013 | 7 comments | by

The Best Thing I’ve Read Recently on Preventive Medicine

More than any other area of medical care, “preventive medicine” attracts by far the highest ratio of uniformed nonsensical rhetoric to actual fact. Al Lewis, at The Health Care Blog, sets the record straight on Asthma:

The average cost of an [asthma] attack requiring an ER visit or inpatient stay is about $2000. The average cost to fill a prescription to prevent or recover from an asthma attack is about $100. It turns out that asthma attacks serious enough to send someone to the ER or hospital are rare indeed. In the commercially insured population, these attacks happen only about 3-4 times a year for every thousand people…a health plan would pay, on average, anywhere from $6000 to $13,300 to prescribe enough incremental drugs to enough incremental people to prevent a $2000 attack…

Assume, very conservatively, that low-risk patients have a risk of attack which is half that of the average patient. This means that putting most low-risk patients on drugs costs $12,000 to $26,600 for every $2000 attack prevented…

It’s not just that this is a wasteful negative return on investment. This is where the catchy title comes in: It’s also that there are known short-term side effects to these drugs.

Entire post is worth reading.

Dec 05, 2012 | 10 comments | by

Hospitals Own More Than A Fourth of Free Standing Urgent Care Clinics

Stephen Wheeler…says he probably would have ended up waiting a long time if he’d gone to the doctor. And even longer at the emergency room.

But they are all about speedy service here at the urgent care center; Wheeler got in and out in 15 minutes. There’s a timer outside of every exam room so the staff knows how long a patient has been waiting. Because Wheeler was already in the MedStar Health system, the clinic was able to pull up his electronic health records and find out if he was allergic to any medications or was due for any other care.

Most of the 9,000 urgent care clinics nationwide are owned by corporations or physicians, but hospital systems are increasingly aiming to get a cut of the booming industry. Hospitals already own about 27 percent of the centers, according to the Urgent Care Association of America.

Source: KHN.

Nov 15, 2012 | 11 comments | by

Generic Statins Reduce Medicare Costs, and Other Links

Every 10 percent increase in the use of generic, rather than brand-name, statins, would reduce Medicare costs by about $1 billion annually.

The vast majority of Medicare Part D beneficiaries still don’t choose the cheapest plans that meet their medication needs.

Emergency room care is only 2% of the nation’s health care bill.

Oct 17, 2012 | 8 comments | by

Surprise: Good Health Isn’t Free

Study results:

[I]ndividuals with high cholesterol who stayed on their statin medications over a two-year period were healthier but had a slightly higher overall cost of care.

The study found individuals adherent to statin medication went to the hospital or emergency department 2.6 percent less often than non-adherent individuals, resulting in medical costs that were 7 percent lower (a difference of $767). The lower medical costs, however, were offset by pharmacy costs that were 45 percent higher (a difference of $1,606).

Oct 12, 2012 | 11 comments | by

Why We Need Health Saving Accounts

Almost a quarter of Americans have less than $100 in their emergency savings fund, according to a recent TNS survey for CashNetUSA. Of the 1,000 participants surveyed, a staggering 22.8 percent reported that if they needed to cover an emergency expense within one day, they would have less than $100 available.

Both males and females reported similar savings patterns, however, 55 percent of Americans with children under the age of 18 reported having less than $800 in emergency savings compared to 42 percent of those without.

Source: It’s Economic.

Oct 09, 2012 | 10 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

Why Can’t We Be More Like Other Countries?

Oops. I guess we aren’t so different:

The practice of keeping admitted patients on stretchers in hospital emergency department hallways for hours or days, called “boarding,” causes emergency department crowding and can be harmful to patients. Boarding increases patients’ morbidity, lengths of hospital stay, and mortality. Strategies that optimize bed management reduce boarding by improving the efficiency of hospital patient flow, but these strategies are grossly underused.

Aug 10, 2012 | 4 comments | by
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