Hospital emergency departments face crisis
By law, everyone who arrives at emergency departments must be assessed and stabilized, regardless of their ability to pay. This makes EDs, the most expensive form of healthcare, a provider of last resort for the uninsured. Nationally, hospital EDs handle 120-140 million visits each year, and the number of hospital emergency departments is declining, with most closures occurring in rural areas.
“Urgent action is needed to sustain hospital emergency departments, which act as a safeguard for patients who use the services and communities that rely on them during a crisis,” said Mashid Abir, the report’s lead author and a senior physician policy researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organization.
“Unless these challenges are addressed, there is an increasing risk that emergency departments will close, more doctors and nurses will leave emergency medicine, and patients will face even longer waits for care.”
Meanwhile, compensation for ED care is falling:
“Researchers found that Medicare and Medicaid payments to emergency department physicians fell 3.8 percent from 2018 to 2022. Reductions in payments for commercially insured patient visits were much steeper, dropping 10.9 percent for commercial in-network and 48 percent for commercial out-of-network visits over the period.
Hospital EDs at risk
“Urgent action is needed to sustain hospital emergency departments, which act as a safeguard for patients who use the services and communities that rely on them during a crisis,” said Mashid Abir, the report’s lead author and a senior physician policy researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organization.
“Unless these challenges are addressed, there is an increasing risk that emergency departments will close, more doctors and nurses will leave emergency medicine, and patients will face even longer waits for care.”
Meanwhile, compensation for ED care is falling:
“Researchers found that Medicare and Medicaid payments to emergency department physicians fell 3.8 percent from 2018 to 2022. Reductions in payments for commercially insured patient visits were much steeper, dropping 10.9 percent for commercial in-network and 48 percent for commercial out-of-network visits over the period.
Hospital EDs at risk
It is tragic that emergency departments are getting closed mostly in rural areas. People living in rural areas have lower incomes in any country in the world. They normally do not visit hospitals a lot but when they are really sick they visit. So something should be done to support the people of rural areas in this regard.