Hospital topics
-
One city's solution to overcrowded emergency departments and a shortage of beds was the installation of an ambulance-diversion system, whereby ambulances carrying patients with relatively minor injuries were diverted, when necessary, from the city's busy emergency departments to less crowded ones in neighboring counties.
-
Whether it's indigent care, cost containment, transfer laws, financially wary HMOs, overcrowding, reimbursement, or emergency-department inefficiency, the factors "putting the squeeze" on emergency medicine seem to multiply with each new survey. These pressures, the authors feel, are not only weakening the provision of emergency care but also strengthening the argument for a national health plan.