AHRQ: Emergency Department Visits in Rural and Non-Rural Community Hospitals,
NCHS: Older adults, non-Hispanic black persons, poor persons, and persons with Medicaid coverage were more likely to have had at least one emergency department (ED) visit in a 12-month period
According to the CDC, individuals 65 years and older typically make up nearly 25 percent of adult emergency room visits. The creation of the geriatric centered emergency department represents a shift towards catering to the health needs of the growing aging population.
For the Elderly, Emergency Rooms of Their Own
Next time you go to an emergency room, you should be prepared for this: If your problem isn’t urgent, you may have to pay upfront.
State Medicaid program to stop paying for unneeded ER visits
The Obama administration blocked an effort by California to charge Medicaid patients for emergency room visits and hospital stays and allow health-care providers to turn away those who couldn’t pay.
A new program at Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids, MI is identifying “frequent fliers” at the system’s emergency departments and placing those patients with a multi-specialist intervention team.
Hospitals throughout the Puget Sound region are in the midst of a boom, building spiffy new free-standing emergency rooms and entire hospital towers with expanded ERs
In the Annals of Emergency Medicine, several emergency physicians warn of the challenges of incorporating what ER docs do into new models that move away from the current fee-for-service payment to an episode-of-care approach
Hospitals seek more ER patients even as Medicaid tries to lessen demand
Hospitals are tackling a dangerous and costly side effect of emergency-room overcrowding and long wait times: the growing number of patients who get fed up and leave without treatment.
A survey of the nation’s homeless in 30 cities has found that more than one in five visited the emergency department or was hospitalized over three times in the last year.
A recent statistical brief from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality shines a light on just how wide the gap is between rural and non-rural EDs.
It would seem logical that giving people access to primary health-care services would help cut down on visits to the emergency room. But a new study suggests that when it comes to mental-health services for kids, that may not be the case
In 2009, there were 241 free-standing emergency departments, compared with 146 four years ago, according to the American Hospital Association.
Florida wants to be the first state in the nation to charge most of its Medicaid recipients a monthly premium as well as $100 for using the ER for routine care
The ED is being asked to pave a much different path, one that may lead out of the hospital as much as it leads in; a U-turn lane of sorts for patients who can be more effectively—and less expensively—cared for at home or in another setting.
Hospital emergency rooms, particularly those serving the urban poor, are closing at an alarming rate even as emergency visits are rising
Rural patients were 5.4 times more likely than their urban counterparts to visit a hospital emergency department with an eye injury
The emergency room is among the top hospital departments responsible for malpractice suits—and diagnostic errors account for 37% to 55% of cases in studies of closed claims.
Headache as a primary diagnosis prompted more than three million visits to hospital emergency rooms in 2008
Hospital urgent care centers may charge big, like ERs
Hospitals nationwide are trying to redefine the E.R. experience for the elderly by building facilities dedicated solely to their needs
In Baltimore County, providing interpretation services emerges as crucial need
Ensuring ED Specialty Call a Growing Problem in CA
Making an appointment for the emergency room a growing trend
Doctors and triage nurses know these so-called “frequent fliers” or “boomerang” patients, all too well. And they’d keep them out of the hospital, if only they had the resources and know-how to do so
As hospitals switch to electronic medical records, doctors worry about spending more time in front of computers rather than patients. To solve the problem, physicians are turning to an age-old profession — scribes.
They worry that as millions of people suddenly gain health coverage in 2014 under the new federal health law, they may have trouble finding primary care doctors and will turn to hospital emergency departments instead.
Promoting emergency department services was one of the hot trends of 2010 and that’s likely to continue in 2011 as hospitals and their partners continue to create new services that improve access to care and patient satisfaction.
Online Tool Takes the ‘Wait’ Out of Waiting Rooms
Two-thirds of emergency department administrators believe that the reform law will increase their patient volume, while just 5 percent say patient volume will decrease, according to a new survey of more than 600 administrators
Patients with mental and behavioral health issues rather than physical ailments often cause a bottleneck in hospital emergency rooms for “up to a week or more” because inpatient psychiatric beds are lacking
Use of advanced radiology to assess injuries increased about threefold over 10 years in emergency rooms in the U.S., raising costs and possibly adding to cancer risk
A trip to a retail clinic or urgent care center can substitute for a trip to the emergency department for between 13.7% and 27.1% of patients who don’t require hospital level of care, “with a potential cost-saving of $4.4 billion annually.”
Some hospital emergency rooms have begun advertising how long the wait time for care will be, using text messages or online billboards
Among the uninsured, 7.4 percent made two or more visits to an E.R., but so did 5.1 percent of people with private insurance. Medicaid recipients were the heaviest users of E.R.’s, with 15.3 percent of them making two or more visits during the year.
Emergency room nurse Erin Riley suffered bruises, scratches and a chipped tooth last year from trying to pull the clamped jaws of a psychotic patient off a doctor’s hand at a suburban Cleveland hospital
There were nearly 117 million patient visits to the nation’s emergency rooms in 2007, a 23% increase over a decade, or 39.4 visits per 100 persons
Vita Advisors, LLC is a research-based strategic advisory firm serving the health care industry.
View more tags »