Emergency room visits in Massachusetts have remained at high levels, even after Mass switched to a universal-type health care plan for every resident. Yesterday we spent some time talking about how Twitter is teaching us about doctor wait times and patient annoyances. If you’ll remember, the post went on to talk about Massachusetts’ universal plan and how it has affected doctor wait times for patients in that state.
It seems that a new study released by the non-profit Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. has found that not only doctor wait times have gone up, but emergency room visits have gone up as well. Massachusetts’ emergency room visits were expected to drop dramatically after the universal state plan took effect, but that hasn’t been the case. According to the study, numbers have either risen or remained exactly the same for emergency room visits.
“People having a stronger connection with a primary care doctor, people being able to get same-day appointments, and people being able to get after-hours care would potentially make a big difference,” Anya Rader Wallack, interim president of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation, said.
While patients are waiting 50 to 100 days for a simple appointment with their family physician, they are getting sicker and more impatient and taking those routine visits to the emergency room instead. Now, with everyone in Mass being covered and having health insurance, a trip to the emergency room is more convenient for many than to wait months just to see the family doctor.
Massachusetts’ emergency room visits account for nearly a quarter of annual visits statewide, which is an amazing number. The simple reason for this is that now that every resident of Mass is insured, there just aren’t enough doctors or available primary care to treat them all, and they’re continuing to turn to the emergency rooms for routine check-ups. It’s a dire scenario for the rest of us.
As we talked about before, primary care physicians are dwindling away, while medical students prefer the higher paying specialty jobs. This does not bode well for a country that is in the middle of health care reform, when there just aren’t enough doctors to treat the 46 million who could possibly have health insurance very soon.
If one state cannot provide enough primary care to their patients, turning them away and causing them to head to the emergency rooms in mass numbers, how is an entire nation expected to overcome this hurdle? What are your thoughts?
While emergency room visits are always an option under the Mass universal plan, why not just get the preventative care that you need right when you need it? That’s what the No Insurance Club offers. Without sounding all too salesy, Club doctors to offer Club patients preferential treatment, so that when you need to see a doctor, you actually get to see the doctor.
It’s a revolutionary idea, right? Seeing your family doctor when you’re actually sick, or even before you get sick. But, it is still possible in a nation where the average wait time to see your doctor is a month. Check out all the info at http://www.noinsuranceclub.com.
