PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

ER overcrowding hurts minorities in California

2012-08-07
(Press-News.org) Hospitals in areas with large minority populations are more likely to be overcrowded and to divert ambulances, delaying timely emergency care, according to a multi-institutional study focused on California.

The researchers examined ambulance diversion in more than 200 hospitals around the state to assess whether overcrowding in emergency rooms disproportionately affects racial and ethnic minorities. They found that minorities are more at risk of being impacted by ER crowding and by diversion than non-minorities.

The study will be published in the August issue of Health Affairs.

"Our findings show a fundamental mismatch in supply and demand of emergency services,'' said lead author Renee Y. Hsia, MD, assistant professor of emergency medicine at UCSF. She is also an attending physician in the emergency department at San Francisco General Hospital & Trauma Center.

"If you pass by a closer hospital that is on diversion for a hospital 15 minutes down the road, you are increasing the amount of time the patient is in a compromised situation," Hsia said. "It puts these patients at higher risk for bad health outcomes from conditions like heart attacks or stroke, where minutes could mean the difference between life and death."

Ambulance diversion is triggered when a hospital's emergency department is too busy to accept new patients – ambulances are rerouted to the next available ER, sometimes miles away. It is especially common in urban areas, particularly in recent years as demand for emergency care has risen.

This is the first study using hospital-level data to show how diversion affects minorities, the authors said.

The scientists looked at emergency departments in all of California's acute, nonfederal hospitals operating in 2007. Pediatric hospitals were excluded because they typically do not treat adults, as well as hospitals in counties that forbid the practice of ambulance diversion. Altogether, the study involved 202 hospitals in 20 counties where diversion is permitted – the majority of them are not-for-profit facilities.

In all, 92 percent of the hospitals were on diversion for a median of 374 hours over the course of the year. Those serving high numbers of minorities were on ambulance diversion for 306 hours compared to 75 hours at hospitals with fewer minority patients.

"Because ambulances typically transport patients needing true emergency care, diversion reroutes the neediest patients away from their nearest hospital, representing a failure of the systems to provide the intended care,'' the authors wrote.

Some limitations to the study were noted: Diversion is an imperfect measure of overcrowding, and even when an emergency department is on diversion status, certain patients – particularly trauma patients – still can be accepted. Additionally, the study looked solely at California hospitals.

"Emergency departments and trauma centers are closing more frequently in areas with vulnerable populations, including racial and ethnic minorities,'' Hsia said. "This is a systems-level health disparities issue that requires changing the 'upstream' determinants of access to emergency care. It's not just a problem at the level of the emergency department itself, but of the hospital and entire system."

The authors say their research points to the need for systemic reform, including better management of hospital flow and statewide criteria regulating diversion policies.

INFORMATION:

Co-authors are Steven M. Asch, MD, MPH, Robert E. Weiss, PhD, David Zingmond, MD, PhD, Li-Jung Liang, PhD, Weijuan Han, MS, and Heather McCreath, PhD of UCLA; and senior author Benjamin C. Sun, MD, of Oregon Health and Science University.

The study was funded by the Emergency Medicine Foundation, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, UC Los Angeles, Older Americans Independence Center, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Physician Faculty Scholars program.

UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care.



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Study finds correlation between injection wells and small earthquakes

Study finds correlation between injection wells and small earthquakes
2012-08-07
Most earthquakes in the Barnett Shale region of north Texas occur within a few miles of one or more injection wells used to dispose of wastes associated with petroleum production such as hydraulic fracturing fluids, according to new research from The University of Texas at Austin. None of the quakes identified in the two-year study were strong enough to pose a danger to the public. The study by Cliff Frohlich, senior research scientist at the university's Institute for Geophysics, appears this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "You ...

UMass Amherst, national team define limits of microbial life in an undersea volcano

UMass Amherst, national team define limits of microbial life in an undersea volcano
2012-08-07
AMHERST, Mass. – By some estimates, a third of the Earth's organisms by mass live in our planet's rocks and sediments, yet their lives and ecology are almost a complete mystery. This week, microbiologist James Holden at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and others report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the first detailed data about a group of methane-exhaling microbes that live deep in the cracks of hot undersea volcanoes. Holden says, "Evidence has built over the past 20 years that there's an incredible amount of biomass in the Earth's subsurface, ...

Possible muscle disease therapeutic target found

2012-08-07
Baltimore, MD — The study of muscular system protein myostatin has been of great interest to researchers as a potential therapeutic target for people with muscular disorders. Although much is known about how myostatin affects muscle growth, there has been disagreement about what types of muscle cells it acts upon. New research from a team including Carnegie's Chen-Ming Fan and Christoph Lepper narrows down the field to one likely type of cell. Their work is published the week of August 6 by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Myostatin is known to inhibit ...

New bird species discovered in 'cloud forest' of Peru

New bird species discovered in cloud forest of Peru
2012-08-07
ITHACA, N.Y. – A colorful, fruit-eating bird with a black mask, pale belly and scarlet breast – never before described by science – has been discovered and named by Cornell University graduates following an expedition to the remote Peruvian Andes. The Sira Barbet, Capito fitzpatricki, is described in a paper published in the July 2012 issue of The Auk, the official publication of the American Ornithologists' Union. The new species was discovered during a 2008 expedition led by Michael G. Harvey, Glenn Seeholzer and Ben Winger, young ornithologists who had recently graduated ...

UC San Diego team aims to broaden researcher access to protein simulation

2012-08-07
Using just an upgraded desktop computer equipped with a relatively inexpensive graphics processing card, a team of computer scientists and biochemists at the University of California, San Diego, has developed advanced GPU accelerated software and demonstrated for the first time that this approach can sample biological events that occur on the millisecond timescale. These results have the potential to bring millisecond scale sampling, now available only on a multi-million dollar supercomputer, to all researchers, and could significantly impact the study of protein dynamics ...

Investing in quality of care for diabetic patients reduces costs

2012-08-07
MINNEAPOLIS (August 6, 2012) – University of Minnesota School of Public Health researchers have found that medical group practices can reduce costs for patients with diabetes by investing in improved quality of care. In the study, which appears in the August issue of Health Affairs, University of Minnesota researchers analyzed 234 medical group practices providing care for more than 133,000 diabetic patients. After developing a "quality of care" score based on select patient care initiatives, researchers found that medical providers saved an average of $51 in health ...

US-born Latinas at great risk of having babies with retinoblastoma

2012-08-07
In a large epidemiologic study, researchers at UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center found that the children of U.S.-born Latina women are at higher risk of having retinoblastoma, a malignant tumor of the retina which typically occurs in children under six. The study, which focused on babies born in California, also found that offspring of older fathers were at greater risk for retinoblastoma, as were children born to women with sexually transmitted diseases and those born in multiple births, which may indicate an increased risk from in vitro fertilization. Those findings confirmed ...

Seafood, wild or farmed? The answer may be both

Seafood, wild or farmed? The answer may be both
2012-08-07
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Most people think of seafood as either wild or farmed, but in fact both categories may apply to the fish you pick up from your grocery store. In recent years, for example, as much as 40 percent of the Alaskan salmon catch originated in fish hatcheries, although it may be labeled "all wild, never farmed." An article produced by a working group of UC Santa Barbara's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) recommends that when a combination of seafood production techniques are used, this be acknowledged in the marketplace. ...

Preschool children who can pay attention more likely to finish college

Preschool children who can pay attention more likely to finish college
2012-08-07
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Young children who are able to pay attention and persist on a task have a 50 percent greater chance of completing college, according to a new study at Oregon State University. Tracking a group of 430 preschool-age children, the study gives compelling evidence that social and behavioral skills, such as paying attention, following directions and completing a task may be even more crucial than academic abilities. And the good news for parents and educators, the researchers said, is that attention and persistence skills are malleable and can be taught. The ...

Critically ill uninsured Americans still at risk of being turned away from hospitals despite law

2012-08-07
Despite a twenty-five year old law that bans "patient dumping" the practice continues to put uninsured Americans at risk, according to a national team of researchers led by a professor at the George Washington School of Public Health and Health Services. Patient dumping is the practice of turning away or transferring uninsured patients with emergency medical conditions. The study, which appears in the August issue of Health Affairs, suggests that hospitals still practice "patient dumping" which is in violation of the law. The researchers investigate and present five ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Can ocean-floor mining oversights help us regulate space debris and mining on the Moon?

Observing ozonated water’s effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 in saliva

Alcohol-related deaths up 18% during pandemic

Mothers of twins face a higher risk of heart disease in the year after birth

A new approach to detecting Alzheimer’s disease

Could the contraceptive pill reduce risk of ovarian cancer?

Launch of the most comprehensive, and up to date European Wetland Map

Lurie Children’s campaign urges parents to follow up right away if newborn screening results are abnormal

Does drinking alcohol really take away the blues? It's not what you think

Speed of risk perception is connected to how information is arranged

High-risk pregnancy specialists analyze AI system to detect heart defects on fetal ultrasound exams

‘Altar tent’ discovery puts Islamic art at the heart of medieval Christianity

Policy briefs present approach for understanding prison violence

Early adult mortality is higher than expected in US post-COVID

Recycling lithium-ion batteries cuts emissions and strengthens supply chain

Study offers new hope for relieving chronic pain in dialysis patients

How does the atmosphere affect ocean weather?

Robots get smarter to work in sewers

Speech Accessibility Project data leads to recognition improvements on Microsoft Azure

Tigers in the neighborhood: How India makes room for both tigers and people

Grove School’s Arthur Paul Pedersen publishes critical essay on scientific measurement literacy

Moffitt study finds key biomarker to predict KRASG12C inhibitor effectiveness in lung cancer

Improving blood transfusion monitoring in critical care patients: Insights from diffuse optics

Powerful legal and financial services enable kleptocracy, research shows

Carbon capture from constructed wetlands declines as they age

UCLA-led study establishes link between early side effects from prostate cancer radiation and long-term side effects

Life cycles of some insects adapt well to a changing climate. Others, not so much.

With generative AI, MIT chemists quickly calculate 3D genomic structures

The gut-brain connection in Alzheimer’s unveiled with X-rays

NIH-funded clinical trial will evaluate new dengue therapeutic

[Press-News.org] ER overcrowding hurts minorities in California