The end of urgent care?

A recent trend where urgent care centers are being converted to free-standing emergency rooms has hit the Midwest. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that “Froedtert Health proposing to convert its urgent care clinic in New Berlin to a free-standing emergency department.” Why would they do that?  Conventional wisdom holds that EDs are money losers. Although this is…

And you think delays at airports are bad…

The NHS has a target that all patients should be treated within four hours of arriving at the emergency room. This is a laudable goal, but it has lead to some unexpected consequences: patient stacking. According to the Daily Mail, (‘A&E patients left in ambulances…‘), “Thousands of people a year are having to wait outside…