A recent study in the Annals of Emergency Medicine said about one ambulance in the U.S. is diverted every minute from its intended emergency department because it was overcrowded and could not care safely for another sick or injured patient. Using research from the 2003 National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that hospital emergency departments diverted ambulances when they were overcrowded, citing a lack of appropriate inpatient beds (51%), a high number of emergency department visits (50%), and complexity of emergency department cases (18%).
Also, about 16.2 million patients arrived by ambulance at emergency departments in 2003, representing 14% of the total emergency department visits made that year, according to the CDC. Of those visits, seniors accounted for 40%, the largest group transported by ambulances to emergency departments. "Considering the biggest users of ambulance services are people over age 65, and the number of seniors is expected to substantially increase over the next decade, ambulance diversion could disproportionately affect this age group," Catharine Burt, the study's lead author, said in a news release.
A separate study by UCLA researchers, published with the CDC's findings online in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, found that ambulance diversions at Los Angeles County hospitals more than tripled between 1998 and 2004.
[ via Modern Healthcare ]
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