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JD, Usha Vance visit Greenland as Trump administration eyes territory; Maine nurses, medical workers call for improved staffing ratios; Court orders WA to rewrite CAFO dairy operation permit regulations; MS aims to expand Fresh Start Act to cut recidivism.

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The Dept. of Health and Human Services prepares to cut 10,000 more jobs. Election officials are unsure if a Trump executive order will be enacted, and Republicans in Congress say they aim to cut NPR and PBS funding.

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Rural folks face significant clean air and water risks due to EPA cutbacks, a group of policymakers is working to expand rural health care via mobile clinics, and a new study maps Montana's news landscape.

Doctors Say Some Patients Use Emergency Rooms for Follow-Up Care

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Thursday, June 18, 2015   

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Americans visit emergency rooms more than 136 million times each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and some make a second visit for issues that could better be addressed with a primary care or specialist physician.

A study published this month in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that about 8 percent of patients seen in the ER return in three days.

"Every emergency department deals with this,” says Dr. Lee Garvey, an ER physician at Carolinas Medical Center. “It's universal. People have need for episodic care, and if they either aren't connected or their primary care office is booked solid, then it's hard to work in a non-scheduled, follow-up appointment."

It's an issue the Carolinas Healthcare System in Charlotte has plans to address by this fall with a clinic specifically for post emergency care.

Garvey says another big factor in unnecessary ER visits is the fact that for many who don't have health coverage, it's their only access to care.

The unnecessary ER visits impact more than just the care of those patients, Garvey points out, and can clog up the wait times for people with a true emergency.

"It does place some volume of patients in the ED and just having that volume of patients with issues that can be cared for elsewhere does impact the flow and efficiency of the true emergency cases," he states.

According to the journalism public interest website Pro Publica, the average wait time at North Carolina hospitals is 147 minutes, 12 minutes higher than the national average.

Some hospitals in the state have average waits of as many as five hours.





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