Hospitals and hospital systems now offer easier access to their emergency rooms as a potential business strategy by setting up ways patients can make appointments to visit the ER, Kaiser Health News reported. Dignity Health, UC San Francisco Medical Center and other inpatient providers create appointment systems in order to boost patient satisfaction. However, critics suggest that the appointment system encourages patients to seek care in the costliest of settings to provide services, burdening them with larger bills and doing little to decrease the cost of care overall. Read the full article at FierceHealthIT