From last week’s Boston Globe:
The state has ordered Massachusetts hospitals to stop turning away ambulances when their emergency rooms are overcrowded, a decades-old practice that can delay treatment and has upset patients denied care at their usual hospitals.
John R. Graham at StateHouseCall.org has insightful commentary:
Massachusetts’ health care leaders continue to believe that they can solve problems by just ordering them to go away.
Subsequently, we’ve seenthat this resulted in cost overruns, but no real improvement in access to health care. The latest evidence confirming that Massachusetts has seen no positive change is the continuing problem of hospitals’ diverting ambulances to other hospitals when their ERs are overloaded. …
If only health reform were so easy, that it could be achieved by the stroke of a pen!
Read the rest here.
