… because our glorious free-market health system ensures that nobody has to wait to see a doctor.
Right?
[F]or 58-year-old Michael Herrara of Dallas help never came. He died of a heart attack last week an estimated 19 hours after he arrived at Parkland Memorial Hospital’s emergency room waiting room complaining of severe stomach pains, according to reports from WFAA News in Dallas.
Members of the Herrera family said they know they aren’t alone in facing dangerously long emergency room waiting times in this country.
Emergency physicians say the problem is getting worse…
Members of the American College of Emergency Physicians have long said emergency rooms across the country face a difficult problem: They want to provide the best care, but everybody is swamped…
In 2004, the CDC reported that the average patient spent 3.3 hours in emergency department. Almost 400,000 patients waited 24 hours or more…
“Anecdotally, there’s no question that it’s getting worse,” said Dr. Sandra Schneider, secretary treasurer for ACEP and professor of emergency medicine at the University of Rochester in New York.
Schneider said out of 1,500 emergency physicians recently surveyed by ACEP, 200 personally knew of a person who had died because of the practice of “boarding.”
Boarding means keeping patients in an emergency room bed when they should be in a regular hospital bed. Schneider said the practice eventually creates a backup in the emergency room.
