Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
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…
The president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, Michael Gerardi, was recently interviewed about his plans for the organization. One of his key initiatives will be to stop the practice of housing psychiatric patients in the ER. According to Dr. Gerardi: It is inhumane that a lot of patients, especially adolescent patients, sometimes live in an…
One of the big political selling points of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was that by providing people with health insurance, they can get the primary care they need and avoid expensive ER visits. While the expansion of health insurance never claimed to be cost savings, did the ACA reduce ER visits? A paper by…