Essay Sample on ED Issue

Introduction

Matt Losinski, who was the CEO of the County General Hospital, got shocked at the type of feedback he received when he laid the issue concerning inappropriate emergency department (ED) use to the executive committee of the hospital. Agarwal et al. (2016) argued that a number of the committee members gave positive reactions to the issue at hand while the rest was not disturbed by getting the news. They radiated very minimal concern with regards to what could have been in waiting for the hospital's future or if the facility would have any future altogether. Based o the perception of the committee's reactions, they have no established value system or the organizational culture. The members seem not to be caring for the facility, the community that the facility serves, or the facility's future existence.

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Ethical Obligation to Treat Persons who Present at the ED

The ethical obligation requires the department of emergency to deliver treatment or examination whenever requested by any person regardless of their financial backgrounds. There is a need for the ED to have visibly posted signs that informs patients of the entitled rights (ACEP, 2015). The next ethical obligation required that there should be the continual provision of services by the treating facility until the medical condition of an individual becomes stable or resolved. The facility may transfer patients if it has no capacity for resolving the patient's condition. The transfer should be done in a way that does not portray dumping (ACEP, 2015). It is also an ethical obligation for other facilities to accept transferred patients if they have capabilities for advanced treatments.

Sources of Funds to Offset the Costs of Excessive ED Use

Creating a sound policy may lead to the availability of funds for offsetting the cost of excessive use of ED. The enhancement of policy should not only be limited to the correction of state and federal laws but should also ensure that the adjustments are made part and parcel of the regulations (Terp, Wang, Raffetto, Seabury, & Menchine, 2017). The functions of the emergency and the hospital departments need to be succinctly defined so that it would be easy to understand how they operate. The understanding of the functions would help in lowering down the increasing cost of excessive use of ED so that the system may get some kind of financial balance. The restructuring of the hospital needs to be conducted to help in relieving the financial pressure that as to be as a result of ED overcrowding.

Recommendations For Reducing Wastage of ED Resources

Agarwal et al. (2016) argued that over 32% of health care spending goes on wastage and may be resolved without interfering with health care quality. The first recommendation for reducing such wastages would be by establishing hotlines for consultation after the normal working hours. Most of the clients make calls to their primary care offices to get services that are automated directing them to move to visit the ED, but if they could find a way of contacting the healthcare providers, then they would have adhered to the instructions as opposed to moving to the ED (Agarwal et al., 2016). Furthermore, proper avenues of service or care should be developed and maintained so that the patients may not have to move to the ED to be treated on issues that are non-emergent (Morley, Unwin, Peterson, Stankovich, & Kinsman, 2018). Lastly, patient education, as well as increased facilities for urgent care services, may substantially help in reducing the overuse of ED, hence lowering the associated costs that might be wasted.

References

ACEP. (2015). EMTALA (Emergency Medical Treatment And Labor Act). Retrieved from http://newsroom.acep.org/2009-01-04-emtala-fact-sheet

Agarwal, P., Bias, T., Madhavan, S., Sambamoorthi, N., Frisbee, S., & Sambamoorthi, U. (2016). Factors associated with emergency department visits. Health Services Research And Managerial Epidemiology, 3(12), 233339281664854. doi: 10.1177/2333392816648549

Balan, Y., Murrell, K., & Lentz, C. (2016).The big book of emergency department psychiatry (1st ed., p. 372). New York: Routledge.

Kellermann, A., Hsia, R., Yeh, C., & Morganti, K. (2013). Emergency care: Then, now, and next. Health Affairs, 32(12), 2069-2074. doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2013.0683

Morley, C., Unwin, M., Peterson, G., Stankovich, J., & Kinsman, L. (2018). Emergency department crowding: A systematic review of causes, consequences, and solutions. PLOS ONE, 13(8), e0203316. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0203316

NEHI. (2010). A Matter of Urgency: Reducing emergency department overuse. retrieved from https://www.nehi.net/writable/publication_files/file/nehi_ed_overuse_issue_brief_032610finaledits.pdf

Terp, S., Wang, B., Raffetto, B., Seabury, S., & Menchine, M. (2017). Individual physician penalties resulting from a violation of emergency medical treatment and labor act: A review of the office of the inspector general patient dumping settlements, 2002-2015. Academic Emergency Medicine, 24(4), 442-446. doi: 10.1111/acem.13159