Overcrowded ERs = higher death rates

A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association concludes that diverting patients from overcrowded hospital Emergency Rooms (ERs) is linked to a 3 percent higher risk of death for heart attack patients. The study was based upon 14,000 medicare patients in California.

"For every hundred patients there are three avoidable deaths," said Dr. Renee Hsia, an emergency physician at the University of California, San Francisco who led the study. "Now we actually have empirical evidence to show crowding affects patients in a very real way," Hsia told Reuters.

"We know as practitioners it's very unpleasant to work when it's crowded," said Hsia. "You kind of know that you're not able to give patients enough attention because everybody is running around. Now we know we have to pay more attention to this, because patients are dying from it."

Steven L Bernstein of Yale University School of Medicine told Reuters that ambulance diversion is a reasonable proxy for crowding, and that the new findings should be a wake-up call to both patients and policymakers. "You should ask your local hospital what it's doing about diversion and crowding, because your life might depend on it."

ER overcrowding is definitely an issue in Ontario: in fact it may be worse. At 97.9%, Ontario also has a much higher level of hospital bed occupancy than the USA. As a result of this extraordinarily high bed occupancy, Ontario typically has about 600 patients clogging up the ERs as they patiently wait for a hospital acute care bed to become available.

Comments

Ford government fails to respond to 72% increase in COVID inpatient days, deepening the capacity crisis

COVID infections continue to drive up hospital costs and inpatient hospitalizations in Ontario. For the most recent fiscal year (April 1, 2022- March 31, 2023) hospital stays related to COVID cost $1.221 billion, according to new CIHI data. This is about 4% of total hospital spending, creating a very significant new cost pressure beyond the usual pressures of population growth, aging, inflation, and rising utilization. Costs for COVID related hospitalizations increased 22.2% in Ontario in 2022/23 from the previous fiscal year, rising from $999 million to $1.221 billion. That rise is particularly notable as the OMICRON spike of late 2021 and early 2022 had passed by the the 2022/23 fiscal year. The $222 million increase in COVID hospitalization costs came in the same year as the Ford government cut special COVID funding and, in fact, cut total hospital funding by $156 million. In total, there were 60,653 COVID hospitalizations...

The hospital crisis: No capacity, no plan, no end

While Canada has achieved universal public healthcare coverage, that does not mean conservative forces have given up trying to erode that coverage and expand corporate care where it does not currently exist. The battle has become particularly intense in Ontario under the Ford Progressive Conservative government, which is implementing serious cuts to the level of care and moving to bring in for-profit mini-hospitals. Inadequate Staﬃng. Less and less of hospital spending is on staff. Employee compensation as a share of hospital expenditures has consistently shrunk in Ontario. This is not some immutable law of hospital development. It is in stark contrast with the rest of Canada, where compensation has become a larger share and now accounts for 67.1%. Hospitals in provinces other than Ontario now have 18 percent more staﬀ per capita than hospitals in Ontario. Overall, if Ontario had the same staﬃng capacity as the other provinces and territories, there would be another...

Paramedic Services in Canada: Structure, Privatization, Unionization and other issues

Governance and Funding : While police and fire services are usually municipal services, Emergency Medical Services (EMS) are typically controlled by provincial governments. In Ontario, regional municipal governments have responsibility for delivering and funding EMS. But even in Ontario the province plays a key role, strictly regulating EMS, providing funding for 50% of the approved land ambulance costs, and paying 100% of the approved costs for air ambulance, dispatch, base hospitals, First Nation EMS, and for territories without municipal government. Delivery : Like police and fire services, EMS is predominantly a publicly provided service in Canada. But businesses have now made some significant in-roads into EMS, primarily Medavie, a private corporation based in the Maritimes that describes itself as not-for-profit. Medavie goes back over 70 years, with its roots in health insurance. It still operates Medav...

Defend Public Healthcare

Search This Blog