ERs Under Stress

Emergency room doctors and on-call specialists treating poor, uninsured patients at private hospitals in Los Angeles County saw their reimbursement rate slashed by county supervisors Tuesday.

Emergency room visits have soared at area hospitals, buoyed by population growth, a sagging economy and the swine flu. In 2002, Arrowhead Regional Medical Center saw 59,093 patients in its emergency room. That number soared 119 percent to 129,959 in 2009, said Jorge Valencia, a hospital spokesman.

Emergency rooms across California are seeing a spike in patients without health insurance, increasing waiting times and costs for everyone, according to a Bee analysis of state and national health data.

According to an August 2009 policy brief published by the Kaiser Commission (hotlink to the report), hospital emergency rooms in California and elsewhere are "operating at or over capacity" with an increasing number of patients seeking care. According to the report, several emergency rooms studied were described as "overwhelmed" or "close to the breaking point."

Orange County emergency rooms are feeling the brunt of caring for uninsured people who have been pushed out of jobs by the falling economy.

More than two-thirds of respondents say the government should provide more funding to expand services for emergency departments so they can hire additional physicians and other staff, according to a new poll commissioned by the American College of Emergency Physicians.