No ER waits

if i was the guy in the ER with crushing chest pain, but all the docs are taking care of people with ear infections and sore throats, i’d be REALLY pissed with this kind of incentive for misuse of ER services.

I guess there is just no limit to the band-aid kind of solutions to today’s health care crises.

Policy makers will listen to the 300-lb medicaid patient with a cold who bitches about his 5-hr wait in the ER, before the primary care doctors who say they won’t take medicaid (or hip, ghi, aetna, bc/bs, and soon medicare) because of low reimbursement.

medicine (and ER especially) are headed for a major disaster. i feel sorry for young ER docs now – they have a valuable skill that is being dumbed down to appease an under-educated and over-entitled public.

anon 5:49-

“providers” is what you will get: next time you need an ER (or a primary care “provider” for that matter) you will likely see a PA or NP.

maybe that doesn’t matter to you, but I certainly would rather be treated by someone with the full breadth of scientific training & experience to treat a human being.

RESIDENCY – THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE.

This type of program is totally catered to the very low acuity patient. Most of the time, the one that does not need to be there. In my area some hospitals are placing a Midlevel “Provider” in Triage, minimizing the RN Triage role, and calling the program “Provider is Triage”. The “Provider” sees patients like a Triage Nurse would so they can claim a door to Provider time of almost 0. They follow some and turf the others to the main There have been big problems with midlevels following patients that are over their head rather than sending over to the MD. Also, lots of resistance from Nursing. I wrote about simular programs at http://ermurse.blogspot.com/2007/05/top-ten-ways-to-raise-your-emergency.html

the Illinois Attorney General can kiss my a**. Maybe he’s friends with the guy from New Orleans prosecuting Anna Pou.

Admitting patients, medicaid or not, is a decision that should be left to DOCTORS, now lawyers. I don’t know of a single doctor in a clinic, ER, or anywhere else who looks at a patient’s insurance in deciding whether to admit or not. That’s the problem with medicine today – a refusal by the public to accept an asymmetry of information.