What's behind the Puget Sound's ER building boom? | LocalHealthGuide

What's behind the Puget Sound's ER building boom? -- Seattle Times Seattle/LocalHealthGuide:

"What’s behind the ER building boom?" — Seattle Times
LocalHealthGuide November 27, 2011

Hospitals in the Puget Sound region are in the midst of an emergency room building boom, and in today’s Seattle Times health reporter Carol Ostrom explains the economics–and controversy's–behind the construction.

“Hospital-industry leaders say they’re doing what patients want and what makes good business sense,” Ostrom writes, but critics say the free-standing emergency rooms are “cash cows for hospitals, strategically built in affluent areas to lure busy, well-insured patients and collect fat reimbursements."

Hospitals say the new ERs will streamline care and help reduce costs, but Ostrom points to research that suggests the opposite:

Read "Seattle Times" reporter Carol Ostrom's article here >>

Last year, the "Center for Studying Health System Change," a national research group, noted concerns that increased competition around Seattle could increase overall costs. It found hospitals invading one another’s turf with free-standing ERs and vying to provide big-ticket specialty procedures in cardiac, cancer and orthopedic care.
--Seattle/LocalHealthGuide

Read all RNB stories on Redmond's free-standing Emergency Rooms (ER) here!  
B.Y.