Saving emergency care with primary care

June 3, 2008

It is no secret that to solve ED overcrowding, primary care access needs to be addressed:

I am speaking specifically of those 4 in 5 New Yorkers who are using ERs for non-emergencies and who receive a far greater continuity and quality of care in a primary care setting with their everyday doctor than they do in an emergency room with a doctor the patient has never met before.

In order to give patients the primary care options, however, we must support the community health centers, private practitioners and hospital outpatient departments that deliver the best in primary care. And that starts with the city and state committing themselves to a full healthcare system, rather than solely a disease-treatment system.



Related posts:

  1. That’s how you cut emergency department use
  2. Primary care-specialty income gap: It’s worse than we think
  3. Will the Baucus health plan save primary care?
  4. What role should nurse practitioners play in primary care?
  5. Primary care: Is it worth it?
  6. Are emergency physicians best served to staff urgent care centers?
  7. Will retainer medicine save primary care?


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{ 1 comment }

1 Anonymous June 3, 2008 at 1:56 pm

Whatever cost saving results from diverting ER patients to primary care……ought to be diverted to primary care. Or at least a substantial fraction of it.

In reality, it won’t happen, which is why we have this problem in the first place.

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