Increasing ER visits is a national trend, West Valley Medical Center CEO Julie Taylor said. ER visits from patients without health insurance lead to a shift in costs to people with insurance — helping drive up the overall cost of health care.
“People that aren’t insured that come in and use the service are using a more expensive type of care,” Saint Alphonsus Medical Center-Nampa CEO Karl Keeler said, “which only increases the burden of the insured.”
The struggling economy likely causes more people to rely on ERs for medical treatment because those departments must treat all patients.
West Valley Medical Center has seen a 7 percent increase in emergency room visits compared to last year and Saint Alphonsus-Nampa a 5 percent increase. Those hospitals also have experienced an influx in the number of patients who are uninsured and/or qualify for charity.
When people put off medical care because they can’t afford it or don’t want to pay for it, often their health problems become worse and more expensive to treat. ER visits, even for nonserious medical conditions, cost more than visits to primary care doctors’ offices.
“People are calling 911 because the cold that they had has now settled in the chest, and it’s full-blown pneumonia,” Caldwell Fire Chief Mark Wendelsdorf said. “They’re pushed to the end where they feel like that’s their only recourse.”
The Caldwell Fire Department had about a 5 percent increase in medical calls last year, Wendelsdorf said. He expects about the same this year.
Wendelsdorf also said he thinks more people have accidents requiring emergency medical service when they take on home repair or maintenance jobs that they may have paid professionals to do in the past.
No comments:
Post a Comment