Ross Hunter's List: Health Project

• The dramatic increase in emergency department use during the past several years has been driven, in large part, by the chronic shortage of primary care physicians, according to a study in the Oct. 22 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA.
• ut it also concluded that overcrowding is directly tied to the declining number of primary care physicians, said Manya Newton, M.D., M.P.H., an emerg
• During the past 10 years, ER use has more than doubled in the United States, increasing among the insured and uninsured, said Newton.
• There are increasing numbers of everybody -- insured and uninsured -- coming to emergency departments,
• n reality, the uninsured tend to postpone care longer than their insured counterparts; as a result, they are sicker by the time they access emergency care,
• Unlike primary care physicians, emergency department physicians have to "start from scratch" with each patient and must assume that patients are "dying until they prove otherwise," said Newton. As a consequence, ER physicians are forced to order a battery of tests to rule out possible afflictions.
• Primary care physicians, by contrast, have ongoing relationships with their patients, allowing them to more easily and effectively diagnose and treat patients, saving time and money in the process, Newton said.
  

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