Most People Seeking Treatment In Emergency Departments Have Health Insurance, Study Says

Main Category: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Article Date: 31 Mar 2006 - 11:00 PDT

email to a friend   printer friendly   opinions  

Most emergency department patients have health insurance and regular primary care physicians, according to a study published on Wednesday by the American College of Emergency Physicians, the Los Angeles Times reports. For the study, researchers from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of California-San Francisco surveyed 32,669 households in the U.S. in 2001. According to the study, respondents without health insurance accounted for about 15% of ED visits. In addition, the study finds that about 84% of respondents who visited EDs four or more times annually had health insurance and that 81% had access to primary care through a physician or a clinic. About half of respondents who visited EDs four or more times annually were enrolled in public health insurance programs such as Medicaid or Medicare, and one-third had private coverage, the study finds. The study estimates that about 45 million U.S. adults made a total of 80 million visits to EDs between July 2000 and June 2001. Some experts said that the study indicates an expansion of health insurance alone would not significantly help EDs address problems with overcrowding, which they said results in large part because patients cannot obtain appointments with their physicians or must wait for hospital beds (Yi, Los Angeles Times, 3/29).

"Reprinted with permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation . © 2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

• Additional
• References
• Citations