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Show Hospital Emergency Room Is Expensive Place to Get Care Most Utahn's with children or other occasional discomforts have, by now, learned that a hospital emergency room is a convenient, if expensive, place to get medical care. As a general rule the E.R. (emergency room) expenses are much higher than a doctor's office except that most insurance companies pay for E.R. and don't for a doctor's office visit Because of this there has been much abuse of emergency care facilities in hospitals. In order to meet the increased demand, medical centers have been forced to add staff for patients who are not suffering trauma, but may have a somewhat important reason to see a doctor, or whose doctor is not available. With the reduced time spent by doctors in their offices, for whatever reason, emergency rooms have become the next best place to go for relief of health problems. 50 percent of the patients who now visit E.R.'s could get the same health care in a doctor's office, at about half the price. Since 1970, visits to hospital ER's have increased by 28 million. Insurance companies are not unaware of the E.R. abuse. Many will no longer pay for a visit which they determine is not an emergency. These third party payers (insurance companies) are very concerned about ER abuse and are penalizing both hospitals and patients for the misuse. Not only do they refuse to pay nonemergency non-emergency care for patients, they criticize the facilities for providing the expensive care that could or should be obtained elsewhere. The Utah Department of Social Servies, Division of Health Care Financing, is also concerned about ER abuse by Medicaid recipients, and is initiating programs to identify abusers and direct them to more appropriate health care facilities. Hospitals are designed to treat people who are in need of specific care for severe health problems. When used for other reasons, additional costs are attached to every patient's bill that is there for the proper reason. So one of the best ways to cut hospital costs is to stop the abuse of emergency rooms. Only patients can control this abuse by making the proper decision about health care. |