I just have to say something about this. Bitch is probably more like it. There is a news article on Yahoo about the woman that died in the ER waiting room, had a heart attack and kicked it due to the number of people waiting to be seen.

“An Institute of Medicine report on the crisis in U.S. emergency care detailed trends that have contributed to long emergency room waits, including increased demand, staff shortages and hospital closings.”

I may have already said something about this, but the way they write this up irks me.

“Excess demand might have contributed to Beatrice Vance’s death because a nearby hospital had recently closed, a coroner’s employee said.”

First of all, the trends that contribute to long waits are, according to the study, increased demand, staff shortages, and hospital closings. According to this logic, excess demand at the hospital Beatrice went to was caused by a nearby hospital closing. This is ludicrous. The ‘trends’ above that cause ER waits do not contribute equally as this article implies. The staff shortages and hospital closings are a direct result of the increased demand. Any dufus can see that, but it is politically incorrect to state the obvious because it might hurt someone’s feelings. In my opinion, being ‘politically correct’ is the real reason this Beatrice died. I’m getting off track… increased demand causes the staff shortages, this one is obvious, because when you have more people waiting to be seen, to keep the ‘flow’ of patients down to acceptable levels, you have to increase staff to process them. Hospital closings are a result of this, because rather than increase staff, a for-profit hospital will have no choice but to close. It only makes sense for hospitals to close their ERs, because a large percentage of the people that are overcrowding the waiting rooms are the very people that cannot pay. They can’t pay because they don’t have insurance through their employer and cannot afford to buy it on their own. In other words, a for-profit ER that gets an influx of non-paying patients cannot afford to pay for more staff to take care of those patients, so they have to close, which burdens surrounding ERs.

I have another perspective. My wife is a trauma nurse, and more often than not the wait at the ER is horrendous because there are so many people that should be seen by a regular physician instead of going to the ER. I have worked as a CT and MRI tech assistant, among my duties were handling patients in the room and transport. Both my wife and I have seen the attitude among the general population, and we both agree that the problem lies solely with the patients themselves. People demand their fair share of health care, whether they can pay for it or not. Not only do they demand quality health care, they also act like they are the only people that deserve it. Once a person checks in at a triage desk, chances are the staff will not forget about them. But when the wait is long, people start wondering, and start asking. There are also those that seem to believe they are not visiting a hospital but a five star hotel, and the PCTs and nurses all have a degree in hotel management. Seldom do you get to deal with a ‘good’ patient. Beatrice was probably a ‘good’ patient, because it is the ones that make noise that get the most attention.

So the article was all about how hospitals are trying to cope. They are making ‘improvements’ by creating fast tracks, and giving patients pagers. At the ER where my wife works, they try to make a doctor available in the waiting room to process the non-emergent cases quickly. Sort of a fast track, but they have a fast track program as well. It will not fix the problem, because it doesn’t address the source of the problem, which is the number of patients that use the ER for basic medical care. The more improvements that are made to the ER system, the shorter the wait will be. People dread going to an ER because the wait is seldom short, and it is somewhat of a deterrent. Make the wait bearable, more will show up, increasing the wait.