Search: ERs Under Stress

The emergency room at County-USC Medical Center was "dangerously overcrowded" for more than 10% of the month of May, according to a regular report submitted Tuesday to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

Hospital emergency rooms are grappling with an alarming increase in the number of patients whose illnesses involve non-medical use of opiod or narcotic pain relievers, according to two new federal reports.

People who have a personal physician are often inclined to go to the emergency room when they have a bad sore throat or a persistent cough and are unable to reach their own doctor. And as any responsible medical professional will tell you, emergency rooms are hardly the place to go for run-of-the-mill ailments. That is especially true now that millions of Americans have lost their jobs and the medical insurance that comes with them.

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."

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.

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.