Panda’s back, and wonders why people with good insurance still go to the ER. The answer is simple:
So you see, Emergency Medicine is a victim of it’s own success and, as Emergency Departments begin to look more and more like self-contained hospitals-within-hospitals complete with admitted patients (waiting for rooms, you understand) and even critical care patients being managed for most of the initial five or six hours in which everything important is usually done, the problem of overcrowding is only likely to get worse. Add to this the growing reluctance of office-based practices to handle really complicated patients when it is ridiculously easy to divert them to the Emergency Department and a steadily worsening shortage of primary care physicians, while the situation is no doubt great for my personal job security it is hardly the best way to do business.
