From the LA Times:
The stereotype of hospital emergency rooms crowded with patients waiting endlessly to be seen by a doctor is true, according to a new study in Tuesday’s edition of Archives of Internal Medicine. The conventional wisdom that throngs of low-income, uninsured people who use the ER as a substitute for primary care visits are to blame, however, is wrong.
First, a few statistics:
In 1997, the median wait time for ER patients was 22 minutes. By 2006, it was 33 minutes.
Per capita use of ERs was 40.5 visits per 100 people in 2006, up from 34.2 visits per 100 people a decade earlier.
The proportion of ER patients deemed to be suffering from a real medical emergency fell from 26.9% in 1997 to 18.3% in 2007.
The percentage of ER patients who lacked health insurance remained between 16% and 17% between 1997 and 2006.
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