NPR (3/19, Shute) reports in its "Shots" blog on a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association finding that while "cash-strapped states are coming up with an appealingly simple fix for soaring Medicaid costs: Don't pay for emergency room visits for people who aren't sick enough to be there." The problem is that "it's almost impossible to figure out who's sick enough and who isn't at the moment they walk in the door." The study was based on "discharge records for almost 35,000 people who visited emergency rooms in 2009."
Modern Healthcare (3/21, Robeznieks, Subscription Publication, 71K) reports, "Based on 'discharge diagnosis' (the physician's assessment of a patient's condition upon release), only 6.3% of the cases studied could be classified as 'primary-care treatable visits.'"
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