14 September 2014
Assignment 3: Putting Research into Action
Review scholarly and trade journals, as well as popular journals, of the last three years that deal with the medical profession in general and emergency medicine specifically. Search for articles and reports that describe the kinds of problems faced by institutions and people specializing in giving emergency care. Write a report of no more than three pages (double-spaced) summarizing your findings. At the end of your report, please provide a list of your sources used in your research. Medical service prices keep increasing, mainly the emergency departments. Currently, emergency room trips are now the most expensive health care cost. A study by NIH found that the average emergency room visit was more than two thousand dollars, which was forty percent more than the average American spends on rent each month. More than half emergency room visits are preventable conditions that never got taken care of at the regular doctor. Uninsured people statistically let conditions slide until they are so severe they need to go to the emergency room. One of the two most common reasons for American emergency room visits is for urinary tract infections and treating sprains. These treatments end up being extraordinarily more expensive than treating them at just a regular physician. They are mostly avoidable issues, but people think it’s cheaper to ignore the problem but end up usually paying a lot more for the untreated issue later. The health care industry has a very wide billing system for Americans. This means patients usually have no idea how much their bill will be until after they have been in the hospital, which is too late to change anything. IQR, interquartile range, is used to represent the twenty-fifth and the seventy-fifth percentile of fees and charges. From the data, it is obvious hospitals then charge patients a lot more or a lot less than the average service prices. Usually they end up charging a lot more for simple products. But because they are needed in a time of emergency, hospitals feel as though they can charge any price because their patients are in a state of emergency. It is not fair to charge unknowing customers absurdly high rates. They are not shown the prices upfront because they are in a state of emergency.
Many patients seeking emergency medical treatment have preventable conditions, which could have been seen at a regular doctor for a lot cheaper. Unfortunately, those uninsured do not tend to go to physicians, but wait until preventable conditions get much worse and go straight to the emergency room. This is a very expensive choice, especially if one is uninsured. Common illnesses and problems can be treated quickly and cheaply Patients who are insured end up having their bill raised as a result of uncompensated payment from those who cannot afford it. This is how emergency room billings can vary so much from patient to patient. Average charges for conditions can vary by thousands of dollars, depending on who is being billed. Even if a person has insurance, their bill could be increased just because of that fact.
