Career Development : Calendar

Webcast: Crisis in America�s Emergency Rooms

06/13/06    

AHCJ/Kaiser logosPresented by the Association of Health Care Journalists and the Kaiser Family Foundation

The webcast, podcast and transcript is available.

Hospital emergency rooms are under siege. Some inner city hospitals are losing on-call specialists to treat severely injured patients or must pay high prices to keep them. In some parts of the country, ambulance diversions are continuing. So are wallet biopsies which telegraph to hospitals who can pay and who cannot. Changes to Medicaid mandated by the Deficit Reduction Act could affect the care those on Medicaid will receive. Technology and emergency room care will become more expensive, raising the question: “Who will fund this place of last resort as the move to market-driven health care rushes ahead? “

Panelists:

  • Carmela Coyle, senior vice president for policy, American Hospital Association

  • Nicole Lurie, M.D., senior natural scientist and the Paul O’ Neill Alcoa Professor of Policy Analysis at RAND.

  • Brent Asplin, M.D., head of emergency medicine at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, Minn., and is vice chairman of the emergency medicine department at the University of Minnesota.

  • Moderator: Trudy Lieberman, director of Center for Consumer Health Choices at Consumers Union and president of AHCJ board of directors.