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From another article on the same study (albeit earlier): > "Medicaid coverage increases emergency department use, both overall and for a broad range of types o
by trendia 9y ago
From another article on the same study (albeit earlier):
> "Medicaid coverage increases emergency department use, both overall and for a broad range of types of visits, conditions, and subpopulations," says Amy Finkelstein, an economics professor at MIT and one of the authors of the study.
> "Including visits for conditions that may be most readily treatable in primary care settings."
[0] http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/01/02/259128081/medicaid-expansion-boosted-emergency-room-visits-in-oregon http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/01/02/25912808...
- HarryHirsch 9y ago"Including visits for conditions that may be most readily treatable in primary care settings." That's just engrained practice. People used to go to the ER instead of a regular physician, now they continue what they always did. You ask yourself why the hospital doesn't set up a regular practice on the premises and has triage send patients there.
- dv_dt 9y agoIs the ER a cost center or a profit center? Often times, I wonder if even the hospitals themselves know... More seriously, I suspect routing routine patients to lower-cost settings would put ERs more in the red under our current system.
- vonmoltke 9y ago> You ask yourself why the hospital doesn't set up a regular practice on the premises and has triage send patients there. In Texas, they are legally prohibited from doing so. They would have to send you to a physically-separate location, even if said location was still in the hospital's parent network.