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Article: Emergency room visits tumble Use of clinics, managed care credited with decline in trips
- Article from:
- The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee, WI)
- Article date:
- September 23, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1996 The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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For the first time in five years, hospital emergency rooms in the
Milwaukee area are seeing fewer patients most likely because of
managed care, competition from less-expensive urgent care clinics,
and fewer seasonal infections.
Emergency room visits at about 20 area hospitals were down roughly
24,000 through August this year, a 6.4% decline from the same period
a year ago.
The drop-off, mirroring a national trend most prevalent on the
West Coast, means savings of millions of health care dollars,
because caring for patients in emergency rooms costs three, four or
five times more than in other settings.
But the data also raise other questions: Where are the poor and
the uninsured, who ...