ACEP Reacts to Sweeping Health Care Reforms

In wake of Sunday evening’s actions by the U.S. House of Representatives, ACEP issued the following statement that the nation’s emergency physicians fully support universal health coverage, but waed that ED visits will increase under the new health care form legislation: 

 

“The need to shore up our nation’s emergency departments is as urgent as ever.  While many provisions in the legislation, such as inclusion of emergency services as an essential component of any benefit package, will benefit emergency patients, it is clear that emergency visits will increase, as we have seen in Massachusetts, which already has universal coverage.

“We applaud the requirement for exchange health plans to provide emergency services without regard to prior authorization or emergency physician contractual relationships. The nation’s emergency physicians have advocated for years for passage of a national ‘prudent layperson standard’ to require health plans to base coverage on a patient’s symptoms, not the final diagnosis.  This has finally been accomplished with this legislation and applied to all health plans as part of the Patients’ Bill of Rights.

“As we have seen in Massachusetts, though, health insurance coverage does not equal access to medical care, and emergency visits are increasing in that state.  This means critical problems facing emergency patients are not going away.

“The bill includes medical liability dispute resolution alteatives, but the scope is extremely limited, which limits its potential effectiveness.  America‘s medical liability system is broken and without true medical liability reform, patients’ access to lifesaving care will continue to suffer.

“A permanent solution also must be found to fix the fundamentally flawed Medicare physician reimbursement formula.  The continued reliance on this defective system will force more and more physicians to limit the number of Medicare patients they see or cause them to stop participating in the Medicare program altogether.

“ACEP has worked with – and will continue to work with – members of Congress to find solutions to improve the safety and efficiency of emergency care for all Americans.  ERs are a critical, life-or-death part of our health care system and ERs need help now.  This crisis in emergency care is everyone’s problem, because every person is only one step away from a medical emergency.”

ACEP President Angela F. Gardner, MD, FACEP is calling on emergency physicians to unify and find a common bond in the needs of our patients, and put the rancor and division of the path to health care reform behind us in the interest of better emergency care for everyone. 

Dr. Gardner continued her personal statement (available online at TheCentralLine.org):

“Today’s health care reform vote on Capitol Hill, while high drama, really only signals the beginning of the work that needs to be done by emergency physicians to improve access to emergency care for our patients and future patients.  As I write this, I am watching the floor deliberations via the miracle of technology, and I know that the outcome will disappoint 48% of ACEP members, 48% of all physicians, and 48% of the American public, if polls are to be believed … and that will occur regardless of the outcome.

 

“The greatness of our democracy lies in the ability of our people to freely elect their govement representatives and to express themselves fully in the debate over crucial issues.  Never in my lifetime has this been more apparent than during the health care reform debate.  I believe that almost everyone has an opinion on health care, including many non-Americans, and almost everyone has expressed that opinion at some point.

 

“The real challenge to our democracy, to our specialty, and to our organization is to move forward once today’s vote has been taken.  We must have great care not to fall victim to Jefferson’s “tyranny of the minority.”  We must move forward to create the greatest health care system in the world, befitting the greatest nation in the world, no matter the outcome of today’s vote.

 

“There is no “win” today for emergency medicine.  There is only new illumination on the path to achieving better emergency care.  The real work comes as we identify areas that need our skills in innovation and problem-solving and get to work shoring up the nation’s emergency care system.  My fervent wish is that emergency physicians will find a common bond in the needs of our patients, and put the rancor and division of the path to health care reform behind us in the interest of better emergency care for everyone.

       
“Thank you for your leadership and partnership in this endeavor.”

 

Watch ICEP.org and ACEP.org for more developments this week.