Don't Believe the Emergency-Room Laments

What Happened When You Were Seen?

Back in 1996, 96% of people going to the ER would see a physician, while now that's only 90%. This might be due to increased triage care reducing the need or perhaps indicative of the relative seriousness of the reasons people are attending ER.

Also, 15.35% of those attending ER were admitted in 2006. This is a higher number than in 1996 when it was 12.4% and represents a large seven million increase. This percentage of admittances does vary from year to year and there is no clear trend.

When to Attend -- if You Can Choose

Clearly, there are a lot of people who are attending ER for relatively minor reasons. Those people, assuming that they feel that they need to go but have some choice over the time, should try to be there between 4 a.m. and 7 a.m. After that time, the ER gets very busy, and peak attendance lasts from 10 a.m. through 10 p.m., so you could be waiting for those longer times.

The suggestion has been made that some people are using the ER as a substitute for primary care physicians because they cannot get an appointment, assume that they will be sent there anyway, or perhaps if they have no insurance they feel that they cannot get to see a doctor any other way. None of these suggestions have been tested by the survey, but if emergency cases are not rising, there may well be an element of truth in there.