The Journal of family practice
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Patients often seek care from hospital emergency departments (EDs) for conditions medical personnel perceive as nonurgent. The purpose of this study was to examine ED patients' perceptions of urgency, and to determine whether patients with no regular source of medical care are more likely to use the ED for problems they perceive as nonurgent. ⋯ A large majority of ED patients perceive the problems for which they seek care from an ED as urgent, even when they are assessed as nonurgent by a health professional. Lack of a regular source of care has no significant impact on ED utilization for problems that patients perceive as nonurgent. Simply providing patients with a regular source of care is unlikely to have a significant impact on nonurgent ED utilization without efforts to manage utilization and ensure adequate access to primary care.