Lack of primary care and outpatient services. It’s only to get worse given the crisis primary care is in:
Instead, the people clogging the ER are the insured who can’t reach their regular doctor. Cunningham found that communities with fewer or busier doctors tended to have higher rates of ER use. It makes sense — ERs are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Unlike at a regular doctor’s visit, patients can receive a diagnosis, testing and treatment all at once. With the health-care system’s other constraints — community-hospital closures, a shortage of health-care workers and a growing elderly population — it’s no wonder that the insured are flooding into ERs, frustrated by the outpatient system.
(via a reader tip)
