Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
-
The National Report Card on the State of Emergency Medicine (2009 edition) evaluated the conditions under which emergency care is delivered in each of the 50 states and compared those conditions between the states. The Report Card ranked states in five major categories: access to emergency care, quality and patient safety environment, public health and injury prevention, liability environment, and disaster preparedness. ⋯ Within these categories, there was great variability between states in the distribution, planning, infrastructure, and available personnel for emergency care. Effective regionalization may require additional resources or a redistribution of existing resources within and among the states.
-
ongoing efforts to improve access to emergency care and emergency department (ED) staffing would benefit from a better understanding of the distribution of EDs in the United States by size and location. This article describes the distribution of U.S. ED visit volumes according to ED urban versus rural status. ⋯ there are many lower-volume EDs in urban areas and higher-volume EDs in rural areas. Most higher-volume rural EDs are in rural areas adjacent to urban counties. These data challenge popular assumptions regarding ED visit volumes, locations, and staffing needs.