ACEP and the myths of emergency medicine

[daedalus]

Interesting site (definitely is an advocacy organization for the EM speciality, however it is a new take of things after hearing years worth of "there are no real medical emergencies, just back pain at 2 AM" and "emergency rooms are just primary care for the uninsured")

http://www.emergencymedicinerealities.com/

 

[Aidey]

I found the statistic that 12% of emergency room patients were classified as "non-urgent" interesting. That is definitely a statistic I want to know how they came up with before I repeat it. Like how large was their hospital sample pool and what types of hospitals were included, and their geographical location. How many days/weeks/months did they gather data, and if the data was gathered from insurance companies or from the hospitals themselves.

Also where did 'non-urgent' come from? Is that from the hospital's triage system? How did they rectify data from hospitals that used different triage systems? One of the hospitals here uses a 1-5 system, with 1 and 2 being non-urgent, another uses a 1-4 system, with 1 being non-urgent. Did they use the hospitals own designations, or apply their own to the data?

Something I found strange is that they are working to dispel the idea that emergency room visits will decrease if universal health care is enacted, and then turning around and then stating that if "current trends continue the emergency system may not be fast enough to save peoples lives". That seems like a contradiction for them. To me it sounds like they are saying "The current system is overloaded, but we support enacting legislation that we think will increase ER visits".