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Facial Foolishness

21.10.04 at 0737 | # |

Poor Health, Not Lack of Primary Care or Medical Insurance Found to Drive Emergency Visits
ACEP Press Release | 10.18.04

San Francisco — The first large-scale study of its kind finds the majority of individuals who use emergency departments have a usual source of care, medical insurance and are not poor. The biggest factor driving people to seek emergency care is poor physical and mental health, according to the study, which will be released today at the American College of Emergency Physicians’ annual meeting being held here. It is to be published Oct. 19 as an early online publication of Annals of Emergency Medicine (Does Lack of a Usual Source of Care or Health Insurance Increase the Likelihood of an Emergency Department Visit? Results of a National Population-Based Study).

“Contrary to popular perception, individuals who do not have a usual source of care are actually less likely to have visited an emergency department than those who have such care,” said the study’s lead author Ellen J. Weber, MD, Professor of Clinical Medicine in the division of emergency medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “Many insurance programs, and particularly public and private HMOs, require beneficiaries to have a primary care physician, which may be expected to improve overall health and health care, but the continued rise in emergency visits implies that such programs have not had a substantial impact on overall emergency department use.”

Hat Tip CodeBlueBlog

It will be interesting to see the actual article—despite stating that it will be online 10/19 it isn’t available yet (I just checked). Very strange way to announce such a controversial article—at first blush this has no facial validity (not in my ER, or any ER I know). I’m sure it had nothing to do with the national ACEP meeting in San Francisco this week.

National ACEP may have just shot CAL/ACEP (California ACEP chapter) in the foot with their efforts to get Proposition 67 passed on 11/2. When the state chapter is making the Proposition argument that ERs in California are on the brink of financial extinction, it makes no sense for their parent national organization to issue a press release quoting an article, not published, that purports to shows that “85 percent reported having medical insurance, and 79 percent reported having incomes exceeding the poverty threshold” while the state chapter is asking for a 3% surcharge. Arguments: Bipartisan, Pro, Con.