According to a January study in the Annals of Emergency Medicine , stressed-out ERs foster a variety of ills, including decreased staff productivity, increased staff frustration and ambulance diversion, putting patients at risk for poorer outcomes, patient dissatisfaction, and prolonged pain and suffering for some patients, This is not news to health officials in Orange County, which experienced record numbers of ambulance diversions during last year s flu season. When you have a situation like a flu epidemic and a larger volume of patients, the system backs up. It s hard to work under these conditions. The problem is by no means confined to California. We have 23,000 members and this is what they re talking about.
Populations go up and hospitals close.
The hospitals that remain don t have the beds or the staff. On top of that, there is the nursing shortage, which makes it more difficult to find staff, and looming retrofitting costs, which could force many of the state s poorer hospitals to close, she added. The bill, AB 421, was introduced by Assemblywoman Dion Aroner, D-Oakland, and has reached the Senate Health and Human Services Committee. But you re not going to solve anything until you start dealing with outpatient rates. As long as outpatient rates are below cost, it will be impossible for hospitals to have an aggressive emergency program.