Future of Emergency Care Dissemination Workshop Summaries (2007) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
2 The Institute of Medicine Study on the Future of Emergency Care
2 The Institute of Medicine Study on the Future of Emergency Care
Pages 4-13
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 4... ...
teams arrive to transport patients to definitive care; and scientific advances in resuscitation, diagnostic testing, trauma, and emergency medical care yield outcomes unheard of just two decades ago. Yet just beneath the surface, a growing crisis in emergency care is emerging -- one that threatens access to quality care for all.
|
From page 5... ...
In June 2006, the committee released three reports: Emergency Medical Services at the Crossroads; Hospital-Based Emergency Care: At the Breaking Point; and Emergency Care for Children: Growing Pains. These reports provided complementary perspectives on the emergency care system, while the series as a whole presented a common vision for the future of emergency care in the United States.
|
From page 6... ...
Hospitals Reporting ED Visits Total ED Visits (millions) FIGURE 2-1 Hospital emergency departments and emergency department visits.
|
From page 7... ...
Few systems around the country coordinate the regional flow of emergency patients to hospitals and trauma centers effectively, because most fail to take into account such things as the levels of crowding and the differing sets of medical expertise available at each hospital. Indeed, in most cases, the only time an ED passes along information concerning its status to EMS agencies is when it formally goes on diversion and refuses to take further deliveries of patients.
|
From page 8... ...
Lack of Disaster Preparedness Any time a disaster strikes, whether it is a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, or a terrorist attack, EMS and hospital EDs are called on to take care of the ill and the wounded. The nation's emergency care system is poorly prepared to handle such disasters.
|
From page 9... ...
EMS is particularly underfunded. Although emergency service providers are a crucial part of the response to any disaster, they received only 4 percent of the $3.38 billion distributed by the Homeland Security Department for emergency preparedness in 2002 and 2003 and only 5 percent of the funding from the Bioterrorism Hospital Preparedness Program (Figure 2-2)
|
From page 10... ...
Many EDs, particularly those in rural areas, rely on doctors and nurses without specialized pediatric training to handle pediatric patients. Many EMS agencies require little pediatric training of their personnel.
|
From page 11... ...
To achieve this, the various components of the system -- 9-1-1 and dispatch, ambulances and EMS workers, hospital EDs and trauma centers, and the specialists supporting them -- must be able to communicate continuously and coordinate their activities. When an ambulance picks up a patient, for example, the EMS personnel gather information on the patient, and the information is automatically passed on to the ED before the ambulance even arrives.
|
From page 12... ...
The report calls for the creation of a lead federal agency that would consolidate many of the government programs that deal with emergency and trauma care. Improve Hospital Efficiency and Patient Flow Tools developed from engineering and operations research have been successfully applied to a variety of businesses, from banking and airlines to manufacturing companies.
|
From page 13... ...
In part this is because the money tends to be funneled through public safety agencies that consider medical care to be a low priority. Congress should therefore make significantly more disaster preparation funds available to the emergency system through dedicated funding.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.