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Article: Overcrowded Emergency Departments Threaten Patient Access to Care; VHA Poll Shows Hospital EDs Serving Communities Despite Capacity Stresses.
- Article from:
- PR Newswire
- Article date:
- December 11, 2003
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 PR Newswire Association LLC. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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IRVING, Texas, Dec. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Hospital emergency departments nationwide are under stress due to high demand for services but a limited ability to quickly move patients from the ED to acute and critical care beds, since many times hospitals do not have enough open beds available, according to a poll of more than 100 Emergency Department managers. The resulting bottleneck may only get worse if the flu season is as severe as some experts predict.
In the poll, conducted by VHA Inc., the emergency department managers also cited uninsured patients using the ED for primary care and the closing of other area emergency departments as significant reasons for ...