Blog #10: Changes in insurance tied to more ER visits

             According to Reuters Health, “People who either gained or lost their health insurance took more trips to the emergency room than those who had a stable insurance status, in a new study.” Dr. Andit Ginde, an emergency medicine doctor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and his associates conducted a survey between 2004 and 2009 of about 160,00 adults. The results from the health survey exhibited that from the 130,000 correspondents, 83 percent were insured and 21 percent of the uninsured had visited an emergency room at least once in the past year. The survey also showed that 30 percent of people who had been insured for less than a year, visited an emergency room at least once; and 26 percent of people who had recently lost their insurance said they went to the ER. In another study conducted by Ginde, he found that people under the cover of Medicaid, were the most likely to visit the ER in the past year. “Just because they have the insurance label doesn’t mean they have a primary care doctor,” he said.

                Ginde’s major concern in his study and article is that ER doctors may shy away from taking on new patients with Medicaid or without insurance; and also the increase in uninsured patients is causing a large range of testing and treatment to be conducted in the ER, as opposed to emergency procedures. Uninsured people go to the ER to receive the normal care they would receive from a primary care doctor, but by not having insurance the rates would more than likely be too high. This poses a problem to the ER, because the specialized doctors in the ER are going to have to assist those that might not have life-threatening or serious injuries, for what the ER is purposed. And with President Barack Obama’a healthcare law, an estimated 32 million Americans will become newly-insured. Instead of trying to get the ER “usage” to decrease and primary care doctors provision increase, a slight increase in ER use may be what’s to come. And in a society that is already far in the red economy, having programs and people’s pay low, the health care system will probably suffer.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/28/us-insurance-er-idUSBRE82R1J520120328