ER death points at growing problem

Earlier this week, a 49-year-old woman from Illinois died of a heart attack after waiting two hours [1] in Vista Medical Center's emergency room. Her tragic death points to serious problems in the nation's emergency departments, and some doctors are saying that it was only a matter of time until overcrowding in the ER resulted in a patient's death. "There is a crisis that has been here so long that we don't even recognize it as a crisis anymore," emergency care physician Dr. Phil Brewer noted in the Hartford Courant. Many factors have contributed to the ER's increasingly crowded waiting rooms: More patients are forgoing expensive medical coverage and using ERs as a last resort when they are ill; the nation's massive baby boomer population needs more care; low Medicaid reimbursements have forced indigent patients out of primary care practices and into ERs; illegal immigrants, released inmates and homeless people have nowhere else to go for help. The list goes on. In Connecticut, a group of medical professionals met this week to discuss ways to alleviate the problem. They'll be reporting their recommendations next month.

For more on problems in the ER:
- read this article [2] from Courant.com

PLUS: Centinela Freeman HealthSystem in Inglewood, CA said that it will close the doors to its emergency room as of November. Emergency patients will be rerouted to Centinela's nearby sister hospital and other patients will be directed to an urgent care center. Observers are concerned about the impact Centinela's closure--the area's tenth in just five years--will have on L.A.'s strained emergency care system. Report [3]