Abusing the ER

Zachary Meisel and Jesse Pines are both practicing emergency physicians at the University of Pennsylvania. In Sunday’s commentary of the Dallas Morning News, Meisel and Pines claim that many people are going to the emergency room for reasons that are not really “emergencies.” They also have ways their own opinions as to what should be done to resolve this issue. Their argument is directed toward the general public.

One of Meisel and Pines reasons for these unnecessary trips to the ER is that people do not have good enough judgment to decide whether a headache or fever is a true emergency. They also state that despite the long waiting periods in emergency rooms, people would rather walk into the ER then wait for an appointment with their doctors, wait again for lab tests, and then wait yet again for another appointment to review and discuss the test results. They also believe a huge problem is that primary-care providers have little reason to tell their patients not to seek emergency care. I think all of their reasons are correct. I think many people take advantage of the ER when they should be leaving it for those who are in dying need of immediate assistance. All of their reasons and assumptions are made clear in their argument. eisel and Pines are able to get their point across to the reader and at the same time do not bore the reader with several statistics. They give facts and reasons that we could relate to. I think all of their reasons stated are true of the public.

After Meisel and Pines discuss all of their reasoning, they outline what they believe could be a cure for ER overuse. They believe a start would be to change the incentives to line up with rapid access to urgent and specialist care. They then go on to suggest that if the payment structure for primary care doctors was restructured so that doctors would get paid for the after hours calls, then patients would be encouraged from their doctors to call them first before taking a trip to the ER. Their last suggestion is that emergency rooms consider taking steps to change the law on medical exams, so that some ER patients could legally be turned away as long as they could get to their primary- care doctor within 24 hours. They conclude that if these fixes were to happen then we’d eliminate many of the high costs associated with health care. I think all of their suggestions are valid and reasonable. They give interesting suggestions that could really be made possible.

Overall, I agree with Meisel and Pines argument to rid the ER overuse. I think they did an excellent job with the layout of their argument and could get a good majority of the public to agree with them. I think if we truly considered some of suggestions, everyone would benefit from it.