Improving ER overcrowding

You might recall Friday's Editor's Corner [1] about the plight of ERs across the nation; two FierceHealthcare readers responded with additional thoughts on the causes of the problem and suggestions as to what hospitals could do better to improve the situation. Barry Trask, a senior report analyst with Physician Practice Solutions, points out that ER overcrowding is directly related to the diminishing number of primary care doctors in this country. "While some of the lengths undertaken to fix the symptoms of overcrowding [have been] nearly heroic, I think the fundamental issue is associated with access, coverage, and availability and utilization of primary care." Indeed, we've reported before that there's a growing shortage [2] of these physicians, and that many of those who remain feel unfulfilled [3] by their jobs.

Timothy J. Ward, a partner at Tefen USA, enumerated a number of ways in which ERs fail to provide efficient care. His list includes the ER's inability to align staff with patient demand, a dearth of statistics concerning admission patterns, failure to follow best practices for certain types of diseases, slow administration processes, issues with medical testing and more. Additionally, he observes that providing pediatric ERs can be "very problematic and expensive to operate." Trask's letter underscores the larger problems underlying ER overcrowding, while Ward's points out what hospitals can do to fix it.

To see both readers' comments:
- check out the letters on our Web site [4]