We talked today with Professor Linda Green and asked her to clarify a common misconception about emergency room delays. Below are excerpts from our conversation:
“Whenever journalists write about emergency room delays, they tend to oversimplify the problem, and they usually connect the increase in emergency room wait times to the increased percentage of uninsured patients. It’s true that the percentage of the uninsured is increasing, but all the research I’ve seen shows that the percentage growth in visits to emergency rooms is greater for insured patients than uninsured patients.
“So it’s not about uninsured people, it’s about people in general. And the reason more people are going to the emergency room is that the wait time to get an appointment with a primary care physician has gone up to an average of three and a half weeks. There are just are not enough primary care physicians, and there’s no financial incentive to become a primary care physician when other specialties are much more high-paying.
“And while the growing difficulty in access to primary care is certainly a factor in the growth of
“Whenever journalists write about emergency room delays, they tend to oversimplify the problem, and they usually connect the increase in emergency room wait times to the increased percentage of uninsured patients. It’s true that the percentage of the uninsured is increasing, but all the research I’ve seen shows that the percentage growth in visits to emergency rooms is greater for insured patients than uninsured patients.
“So it’s not about uninsured people, it’s about people in general. And the reason more people are going to the emergency room is that the wait time to get an appointment with a primary care physician has gone up to an average of three and a half weeks. There are just are not enough primary care physicians, and there’s no financial incentive to become a primary care physician when other specialties are much more high-paying.
“And while the growing difficulty in access to primary care is certainly a factor in the growth of