Wednesday, July 18, 2007
ENA Responds to President's Comments
The following is a statement from ENA President Donna Mason, RN, MS, CEN in response to comments made by President George W. Bush during a speech in Cleveland, Ohio, July 10, 2007.-----------
On July 10, a primary barrier to health care reform in the United States was illustrated perfectly by President George W. Bush during a speech in Cleveland, Ohio. Unfortunately, the President didn’t offer insight into a solution; instead he demonstrated a complete lack of understanding as to how health care is delivered today and how near the breaking point our health care system has become.
In talking about the challenges facing health care in the United States, the president said:
“The immediate goal is to make sure there are more people on private insurance plans. I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room.”
The issues facing health care in America are complex, but it is clear by this statement that the President isn’t even aware nor understands the fundamentals of the crisis.
Emergency departments are required by law under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act to accept, examine and stabilize patients with emergent conditions. But with wait times growing, the severe shortage of nurses, violence in emergency departments rising, and the ranks of the un- and under-insured so high, treating the emergency room like a primary care clinic, mental health clinic and an emergency room all at the same time is a recipe for disaster.
While emergency departments are committed to providing quality care for all patients, they are intended to treat emergencies, not to provide primary care services. Patients with diabetes, heart conditions, high blood pressure, mental illness and other chronic conditions need the care of primary care doctors and specialists to manage their conditions. They need to be treated before their conditions become life threatening. By suggesting that patients in America have access to health care because they can always go to the emergency department, President Bush not only over simplifies the problem, he ignores the true nature of the problems facing patients and hospitals alike.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report this year showed a 20 percent increase in emergency department patient visits while the total number of EDs in the United States declined by 9 percent. At the same time, the average emergency department wait times are as long as six hours in some states with some patients waiting as long as 24 hours to be seen. When you combine this with the growing number of elderly patients, the ever present shortage of nurses, the nearly 200,000 fewer hospital beds and the tens of billions of dollars of unrecovered treatment costs every year, it is clearly a false and dangerous assumption that all Americans have access to health care because there are emergency rooms.
As president of the Emergency Nurses Association, I know that a solution to the current health care crisis will not be easy. We must build an infrastructure capable of treating a growing and aging population. We have to find a way to train the individuals representing the more than 147,000 qualified nursing school applicants that were turned away during the 2004-2005 academic year primarily because of the lack of nurse faculty to teach them. But most of all, we must admit the failure of the current market-based health insurance system and find a way to truly provide patients with access to care, access that actually prevents illness and injury before they become emergencies.
Posted by HypnoKitten at 10:38 PM
Yes, the United States health care system is broken and there is no easy fix. The health care system, like the military industrial complex of the cold war, is predicated on corporate profits and not the well being of the patient. The CEO’s of the large HMO’s and pharmaceutical companies have the same agenda as any other corporate leader. Raise their company’s stock price or lose their job which pays their obscene salary and bonus. Health care corporation’s focus is financial and they are not concerned with access to care or the quality of care their patients receive.
These same companies will push for tort reform because it limits their liability in medical malpractice lawsuits. They want to limit patient access, reduce their costs and not have any responsibility. The trial lawyers will not tolerate these unconstitutional limits and are fed by the victim’s misfortune. We have all heard the advertisements asking, “Has anything bad ever happened to you. Someone else should pay. Call us now. Time is running out.” How would they survive if they could only make a few hundred dollars an hour? (Assuming, of course, that they are not double billing). However, without these legal wolves patrolling the health care system even doctors would be in at risk to corporate domination.
Where does this leave the doctor? Right next to the patient in the over-crowded emergency room wondering how things have gotten so out of control.
Posted by Dr. Michael Esposito M.D.
Radiologist and Author of “Locked In,” a new medical thriller.
www.mikeespositomd.com
Well said.
However, like most concerns expressed by the nurses and other caregivers on the front lines of American health care, this article is probably just going to end up in the "bitchy nurse" wastebasket of unaddressed complaints.
This is a political problem, but there's nobody, absolutely nobody, in our current administration who would take this head-on.
I can't get the entire code for the NurseBlogs jpeg. It seems the ends are left off both lines. Can you help? tracy@crazytracy.com Thanks.
I agree with srimplate , This is a political problem, but there's nobody, in our current administration who would take this head-on.
www.newmeditec.blogspot.com
Hello! I just found your blog the other day and it is absolutely wonderful. I will be starting nursing school this fall and all of the info and links on here have been very helpful. Thanks so much!
(: Amanda :)
www.amandasrn.blogspot.com
That's a good intwining of two problems,
Emergency rooms and hospitals can't handle liability lawsuits, which makes treating controversial patients (particularly those with chronic conditions) particularly difficult. Hospitals that are sued by patients are going to keep...I don't know, helping?
Hi!
This is unrelated to your post, but I'm letting you know that Into The Unit is back up and posting.
--Jen
We need affordable health care for people but we also need patients to be more accountable for their own health as well. Too many patients don't take their medications appropriately and not because they can't afford them. They just feel that they don't need them and then they get into crisis and cram into the ER for treatment that could have been taken care of in the office. The "my back hurts on Sunday night and I need a note to get off work" crowd doesn't help either.
As long as the government is content substitute the Emergency Medical System for national health care, no reforms will ever be made.
We are operating in crisis mode when we should be concentrating on patient education, disease management and preventative care.
In 2002 it was estimated that the government spent over $132 billion on Diabetes care.
In 2004 hospital costs for asthma related problems were over $96 million for the state of Viginia alone.
In the world we are 23rd in infant mortality, 20th in life expectancy, between 50th and 100th (depending on the immunization) on immunization (overall 67th, behind Botswana).
I don't even want to get started on coronary artery disease and obesity.
I love your blog-- always informative, interesting, intelligent. I'm linking to your blog from my brand-new one-- check me out at http://nursosaurus.blogspot.com/ and add my link if you like!
Kudos! Very informative article, keep up the good works! More power
Hi, im a student nurse, and i find your blog very very informative. i would like to exchange links if that's alright:
http://snpinoy.blogspot.com
ty!
Hey,
so I did an article on nursing and technology- and I tried to create a dialogue between nurses at a hospital, and...well, lets just say I think you'd be amused. What do you think?
Oh, http://alijor.blogspot.com/2007/09/technical-difficulties-nursing.html
I'm an RN and came here hoping to find some good stuff. The article is good, but what are all those links posted in your comment section? Is that how you are monetizing this site?
If not, why doesn't someone delete them?
Anyway, good article, poignant problem, but I don't think as nurses we have much empowerment to fix the issue.
If our salaries were better, if we were better organized, then maybe we could lobby for reform,
Otherwise, it's just big business.
There is a big trend however toward disease prevention, management and outcomes.
Case management is booming. I think the need to keep healthcare cost down is being recognized by Insurance companies as well as Medicaid.
I think some changes are in the wind.
Sorry about all of the spam comments lately. Somehow I got on someone's list of easy marks for spam links. I haven't had much time to go in and delete them all. I hope you'll forgive me and continue to visit. I've got some new protocols on the comments so there will be no more anonymous comments (and hopefully no more spam) from this point on. I just went back through every post and every comment in the entire blog archive and removed anything that didn't belong here, so it should be all cleaned up now. More posts to come.