Nation's ERs at 'breaking point,' study finds

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

At the root of the crisis: Demand for emergency care is surging, even as the capacity for hospitals, ambulance services and other emergency workers to provide it is dropping.

There were almost 114 million emergency room visits in 2003, up from 90 million a decade earlier. Only about half were true medical emergencies. When the poor and uninsured can't get health care anywhere else, they come to emergency rooms, which must treat them regardless of ability to pay.

"It is the only medical care to which Americans have a legal right," noted Kellerman, adding that what constitutes an emergency is different to a doctor than to a desperate patient. Last week, he treated a woman who wound up in the ER after running out of some crucial medication and being turned away by four different clinics.

Yet lack of reimbursement for ER care is one reason some emergency departments go out of business. During the past decade, the total number of U.S. hospitals decreased by 703, and the number of ERs by 425. And the total number of hospital beds dropped nationwide by 198,000, due also to the trend toward cheaper outpatient care.

That in turn means long waits in crowded ERs for hospital rooms to open up. Once stabilized, patients can lie on gurneys in the ER hallway not just for hours but for two days. The new report found that on a typical Monday evening, three-quarters of hospitals reported at least two patients boarded in the halls.

Click here for the rest.

So, obviously, this isn't really an ER crisis: it's just a symptom of the much wider overall healthcare crisis currently facing the United States. I've written about this subject previously numerous times, so there's no need to go down that road again right now, but, suffice it to say, healthcare is a right, not a consumer product. Furthermore, compounding matters is the fact that healthcare and health insurance don't even conform to the economic principles that guide lawmakers in making their policy decisions in this area. It's just one big clusterfuck, and it's getting much worse as each year goes by. In short, they system is collapsing in on itself, and sometime in the future the federal government will have to do something about it. The question is whether that's going to be sooner or later, and how many Americans are going to needlessly die or suffer from easily cured sicknesses before then.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$