The practice of rerouting ambulances away from crowded emergency rooms is tied to higher mortality of heart attack victims. A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association estimates that frequent diversions are correlated to an increase in avoidable patient deaths.
The number of emergency rooms has dropped in the past 20 years and hospitals now are often forced to temporarily divert ambulances when facilities are crowded with patients waiting for beds.
Researchers studied 14,000 elderly patients in four California counties and found a three percent difference in death rates (15 versus 18) between ERs that did not divert and those that diverted at least 12 hours out of the day.
They also warn that high ambulance rerouting is symptomatic of the bigger problem of providing care to a growing number of patients with finite medical resources.
In 2002 The Bee reported on efforts to reduce the chronic overcrowding that caused routine diversions at Sacramento-area hospitals at that time. See attached articles.
PHOTO CREDIT: A patient arrives by ambulance at Sutter General Hospital. 2002 Sacramento Bee photo by Dick Schmidt
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