Other than increasing resources allocated to Emergency Departments, could regulatory interventions help reverse these trends?
Absolutely. In fact, in 2004, the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) tried to institute a rule requiring hospitals to decrease crowding and boarding. Buckling to hospital industry protests, JCAHO withdrew the rules. Increasing the availability of alternatives to the ED for nonurgent care (i.e., primary care physicians) would also help unload the system. Q. What is the federal government doing to help reverse these problems? Remarkably, the federal government plans to cut funding to strained urban hospitals that care for the largest proportion of Americans that also have the longest waits. This is surprising given the massive attention given to homeland security after September 11, 2001. It is not clear that medical safety net will be able to handle a man made or natural disaster if it is straining to care for “routine” emergencies. Q. Some have argued that curbing uninsurance would not reduce ED overcrowding. Do you agree? Uninsured people did not
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