4 ms·
The summary and headline are badly misleading. It sounds like shocking news, but what they really found is disappointing but not that surprising. It's not half
by mysterypie 9y ago
The summary and headline are badly misleading. It sounds like shocking news, but what they really found is disappointing but not that surprising.
It's not half of US medical visits to any kind of medical care that are at emergency rooms. It is half of US medical visits to hospitals that are at emergency rooms.
That's a big difference. Among other things, they are not including visits to your family physician. If they included ordinary visits to your doctor outside of the hospital, then emergency rooms visits would be a much lower percentage.
Looking at the original abstract:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0020731417734498 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0020731417734498
It says, "Our study aimed to determine the contribution of EDs to the health care received by Americans between 1996 and 2010 and to compare it with the contribution of outpatient and inpatient services using National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey and National Hospital Discharge Survey databases."
They are comparing emergency visits to other kinds of hospital visits.
- candiodari 9y agoSo what you're saying is, after years of providing a strong financial incentive to get all your care via emergency departments, people are surprised to what extent the population actually takes this incentive ... Perhaps we ought to reverse the incentive. Well ... yeah.
- payne92 9y agoBingo, I’m so glad you clarified this. Something “didn’t smell right“ here. Even beyond the family physician, there are many specialists that are affiliated with hospitals but see patients in their offices, outside of the hospital registration process. In fact, those specialists often have offices in the hospital or in buildings attached to the hospital.