Big City Rx

I use to have a bumper sticker on my truck -- when I had a truck -- that read: US Health Care Plan: Don't Get Sick!!

It turns out this was helpful advice for those living in cities. According to a report featured in USA Today,

Close to a third of emergency departments closed shop over the past two decades, a new study shows.

From 1990 to 2009, the number of hospital emergency departments in non-rural areas in the USA declined by 27%, according to a study in today's Journal of the American Medical Association.

"That's a hefty number, and more than I expected," says study author Renee Hsia, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of California-San Francisco.

Hsia says she and colleagues did a "survival analysis," much like researchers do for breast cancer patients. "In our study, we used the ER as the patient," says Hsia.

They found that the number of emergency departments dropped from 2,446 to 1,779 — an average of 89 closings per year...

Not surprisingly, the article goes on to highlight that two common characteristics of the ERs that close are that they served the poor AND they were part of for-profit institutions that closed them to help the bottom line.

Fortunately, I live in a rural area -- the feds provide revenue to keep our hospital open.

What are poor people in urban areas to do? Most don't have health insurance, so they don't have a regular doctor. The ER becomes their doctor and now, with fewer ERs available to serve them, it means less opportunity to stay healthy.

What a great country we live in!