Emergency Room at U of C Hospital Turns Away Ambulances

[Stuart G]

Source: Chicago Sun Times.

By CARLA K. JOHNSON Dec 12, 2010 11:57AM


As University of Chicago Medical Center struggles to unclog its emergency department, one statistic keeps pushing back. Because of overcrowding — a growing, nationwide problem — the hospital turns away ambulances more often than any other ER in Illinois.

The city’s premier South Side hospital turns away ambulances for 13 minutes, on average, each hour. No other hospital comes close, according to Illinois Department of Public Health numbers obtained by the Associated Press.

In addition, some ER patients wait more than 24 hours for a hospital bed to open upstairs in the hospital.

Earlier this year, the hospital agreed to pay a maximum $50,000 fine to settle allegations it had violated federal law when 78-year-old Maurice Ross died in the ER waiting room, after nearly four hours without care. Hospital officials insist the incident was a staff member’s mistake and not part of a systemic problem.


Read more: http://www.suntimes.com/2801103-460/hospital-patients-care-health-ambulances.html

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This pathetic problem is due to the local neighborhood hospitals gooing broke for lots of reasons.
But if you read the article, you find it is the poor and no insurance people who use the ER the most.
It is their last resort, and that is why this happens.

[Optimistic]

1. Make a TV show called "Chicago Hope"

You go to the Hospital in Chicago and Hope to get care.--Thanks Tea party for your love of Health Care

[madrchsod]

2. cook county hospital is the only large "public" hospital.

both are basically in combat zones in chicago. other hospitals take critical emergency patients if cook or the university is full.

[Joanne98]

3. Death panels. Where's "the C word" Sarah Palin?

[glinda]

15. She is too busy fabricating her new "caring " image in Haiti.

[Stuart G]

4. It is very sad, people that go to County wait many hours for

service. The poor are shut out of fair and fast care.
They use the ER like the local clinic.
I hope that the clinics that Bernie Sanders included in the health bill get set up as soon as possible.

[Stuart G]

5. And Where is this happening? In the country with, "The Best Health Care.." according to Republicans

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. Our small county hospital ER waiting room was packed on a recent Sat.

at 10 am.
People were occupying all the chairs, sitting in the hallway in wheelchairs, waiting to be seen.
I did a quick visual, no apparent serious emergencies, no blood, cuts, gun shot wounds, imminent births, etc.
The actual ER at that point in time had ONE bed in use.

10 am on a Sat. morning, in a town of 6,000 people, people were packing the ER for non-crisis visits.

I used to work in that ER in late evenings till early mornings, never have seen it that full.

The worse thing was that in the 20 minutes I was near the waiting room, there was NO triage.
One elderly lady at one window, doing "next!".... intake information.
( I am over 60, she was at least 10 years older than I am )

We have plenty of Medical offices, none are open on the weekends.

[AngryAmish]

7. This is a private-run hospital in a very rich area surrounded by lots of poor people

What the hospital does it decide where the ambulance call is coming from. When it is coming from an undesirable place, they hang the "no room at the inn" sign up (since medicaid pays so poorly) and wait for a better call to come in.

[Peregrine Took]

11. True but the emergency health demands of the poor are truly overwhelming

and, as the rest of the hospitals have closed on the south side, this is the only port in the store for them.

[bajamary]

19. that is not really accurate

Actually, the University of Chicago Hosptials does not turn away ambulances based on where its point of origin is. That is more myth, not reality.

They are so overwhelmned by the enormous numbers of emergencies due to the tragic fact that they are the only major trauma center on a major section of the south side of CHicago.

If there was only one major trauma hospital on the north side of Chicago, the exact same turn away rate would occur.

Yes, there are very poor neighborhoods surrounding Hyde Park where Univ of CHicago is located but there are large sections of CHicago with equally poor neighborhood, however, these areas on the west side and the north side all have several major trauma hospitals not ONE.

Full disclosure: I am a cancer patient at the Univ of Chicago hospitals. Their care is terrific. although I often have to wait but that's true at the hospitals on the north side.

U of C hospitals serve hundred of thousands of the neighboring poor people everyday and they serve them as well as they serve little old middle class me.

[DesertFlower]

8. this is appalling. nt

[Crowman1979]

9. Isn't the free-market system great?

:sarcasm:

[aquart]

10. The free market regulates by death.

When sufficient numbers of us have died, all will be well again.

[guruoo]

13. Here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism

[guruoo]

12. Just image how it will be 10 years from now if

"conservatives" continue to have their way

[jerseygal]

14. I wonder what Barack Obama's good friend Eric Whitaker

thinks about this. His job at the University of Chicago is to improve health care on the South side of Chicago. Guess he's not doing a very good job of it - or the patients wouldn't be still coming in ambulances to U of C to be turned away. And they wouldn't have lawsuits about patients who died sitting in their ER.

Eric E. Whitaker, MD, MPH, Executive Vice President for Strategic Affiliations and Associate Dean for Community-Based Research at the University of Chicago Medical Center, leads the Urban Health Initiative.

The Urban Health Initiative is a long-term commitment to strategically improving health and access to quality care on the South Side of Chicago through patient care, community-based research and medical education.

[somone]

16. White House aide Susan Sher's pay from ex-employer U. of C. medical center in 2009: $511,000

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-susan-sher-financial-disclosur20101207,0,5509721.story

[Odin2005]

17. What do you expect? The University of Chicago is the center of Corporatist ideology.

[bajamary]

18. This hospital was Michele Obama's employer

Michele Obama worked at the University of Chicago Hospitals before she went to Washington.

On Jan. 9, 2009, the University of Chicago Medical Center officially announced that Michelle Obama had resigned from her post as vice president for community and external affairs to join her husband, then-President-elect Barack Obama, in the White House as the new first lady of the United States.

Michelle Obama had been promoted in 2005 to vice president for community and external affairs after three years as the executive director for community affairs. It’s true, as the e-mail (and National Review column) says, that she received a sizable pay raise that year. She went from earning $121,910 in 2004 as an executive director at the hospital to making $316,962 in 2005 as a vice president, according to tax returns filed by the Obamas for those years

http://factcheck.org/2009/05/michelle-obamas-salary/

[No Elephants]

21. She also

"served as a salaried board member of TreeHouse Foods, Inc. (NYSE: THS),<47> a major Wal-Mart supplier with whom she cut ties immediately after her husband made comments critical of Wal-Mart at an AFL-CIO forum in Trenton, New Jersey, on May 14, 2007.<48> "


Hillary esd on the board of Wal-Mart and Michelle was on the board of WalMart's major supplier. Godd bless America and our populist Democratic Party.

And Rethugs call us socialist. :rofl:

[No Elephants]

20. Big health care providers are big business. I don't care if they're

technically not for profit.