USA Today Editorial, Opinion Piece Examine U.S. Emergency Department Problems, Progress

• USA Today: Emergency department overcrowding caused by uninsured patients using EDs for primary care is "overstated," a USA Today editorial states. According to the editorial, rising health care costs have "forced hundreds of hospitals out of business, mostly in poorer areas," which has placed "pressure on those that remain." However, there is "little incentive to focus" on EDs for hospitals that are "racing to trim costs" because the departments "are not moneymakers," USA Today writes. Patients being diverted to other EDs -- "once a rare safety valve" -- have "become routine," the editorial states, adding, the result is that the "sickest patients are endangered, and communities are left unprepared for disasters, whether a bus crash, a hurricane or a terror attack." According to USA Today, "Too few hospitals have followed the leaders in making" changes to "fix the ER mess" that were recommended by an American College of Emergency Physicians report released last year. The editorial states, "It's easier to leave the burden in one spot, the ER, than spread the pain around the hospital." Meanwhile, the "American Hospital Association prefers to suggest that the crisis is about the uninsured using ERs for primary care and that only 'fundamental reform' will help," according to the editorial. The editorial concludes, "Yes, major health care reform is needed, but the ER crisis is one hospitals could ease themselves" (USA Today, 5/30).
  
  
• Rich Umbdenstock, USA Today: U.S. EDs "are working on immediate and long-term solutions to the crowded conditions many patients find," AHA President and CEO Umbdenstock writes in a USA Today opinion piece. Umbdenstock says that "more Americans turn to the emergency room for routine care" as the "number of uninsured people increas[es] and fewer primary care doctors [are] available." He continues, "Today's ER problems often are the result of greater challenges facing the community at large," such as the 46 million uninsured and the lack of primary care physicians for "everyone, whether insured or not." The problems with "ERs cannot be relieved solely by changes at the hospital door," Umbdenstock concludes, adding that they are "problems that can be solved only by fundamental reform" (Umbdenstock, USA Today, 5/30).