June 15, 2006
Collapse
Crisis Seen in Nation's ER Care
Capacity, Expertise Are Found Lacking
By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 15, 2006; A01
Emergency medical care in the United States is on the verge of collapse, with the nation's declining number of emergency rooms dangerously overcrowded and often unable to provide the expertise needed to treat seriously ill people in a safe and efficient manner.That's the grim conclusion of three reports released yesterday by the Institute of Medicine, the product of an extensive two-year look at emergency care.
Long waits for treatment are epidemic, the reports said, with ambulances sometimes idling for hours to unload patients. Once in the ER, patients sometimes wait up to two days to be admitted to a hospital bed.
As a system, U.S. emergency care lacks stability and the capacity to respond to large disasters or epidemics, according to the 25 experts who conducted the study. It provides care of variable and often unknown quality and depends on the willingness of doctors and hospitals to lose large amounts of money.
Fixing the problems is likely to cost billions of dollars and will require the leadership of a new federal agency, which Congress should create in the next two years, they wrote.
"This is a crisis that could jeopardize everyone in this room, and all their loved ones," A. Brent Eastman, a surgeon and chief medical officer of the ScrippsHealth hospitals in San Diego, said at a daylong conference on the reports, which were prepared by the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine.
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From 1993 to 2003, the U.S. population grew by 12 percent but emergency room visits grew by 27 percent, from 90 million to 114 million. In that same period, however, 425 emergency departments closed, along with about 700 hospitals and nearly 200,000 beds.
This is what a patchwork for-profit health care system has given us, which is no system and lousy care, for those who can afford it. For the rest of us, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is out of the reach of those without insurance, anyway.
Posted by Melanie at June 15, 2006 08:36 AM | TrackBackFWIW, in mid-May I went into an Ontario emergency room at about 2 pm with a high fever and spasmodic whole body shivering. I was immediately isolated in an examining room and an internist was called. After examination, he told me I was "pan-cytopenic," i.e., that my blood count - white corpuscles, platelets and red blood cells - was essentially zero. By 5 pm I was in a hospital bed (a semi-private room, meaning two single rooms shared a single bathroom) under care and supportive therapy - transfusions, broad-scale antibiotics, and a highly specialized drug designed to boost white cell count. I was discharged two weeks later, considerably healthier than when I went in. Because my provincial civil service retirees' health insurance plan covers "semi-private" charges, between the Ontario Health Insurance Program and my pensioners' insurance my total out-of-pocket cost was (wait for it) zero.
I think I'll stay in Canada. Can't afford not to...
Bush's stroke was in the air. So is Condi's relationship.
My insurance company denied surgery my doctor deems necessary to treat a dystrophic condition.
They did this, by odd coincidence, in the 18th month of our 18-month COBRA policy. Adding up the premiums we've paid them in the past 18 months, I could have had the surgery several times over. But when I needed it - they weren't there.
I don't have any objection at all to physicians and health care providers making money. It's the scum in between the patient and the health care system that boils my blood.
Universal single-payer health care ala Canada and every other developed country in the world except USA, that's the ticket. Boreas' experience above is close to the norm in Canada, and close to what I myself have experienced several times, and those known to me. Those over 65, drugs are free, not those confusing plans they have down there. I'm talking Ontario but the other provinces don't differ drastically.
'Course I realize U.S. can't afford health care for its citizens, since they need the money to invade/destroy other countries, weaponize space, things like that.
'Course I realize U.S. can't afford health care for its citizens, since they need the money to invade/destroy other countries, weaponize space, things like that.
