United States: In the latest finding, it is revealed that the hospitals in the US have olden men and women waiting outside of the R for hours, even after the determination of physicians that they need to be admitted to the hospital.
More about the case
Hashem Zikry, an emergency medicine physician at UCLA Health, said ER hallways are “lined from end to end with patients on stretchers in various states of distress calling out for help, including a number of older patients,” as USA Today reported.
Physicians staffing emergency rooms cite the problem of ‘ER boarding’ as bad enough, and even call it even worse than during the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic, during when hospitals were swarmed with ill patients.
The experts data suggest that, boarding can be causes in case of all ER patients, where adults of age 65 and above accounts for nearly 20 percent of total ER admittants. These older adults are especially considered vulnerable to bear long waiting hours for receiving care.
In a 2019 estimated report suggest that about 10 percent of patients were boarded in ERs, before going at hospital care receiving end, where around 30 to 50 percent of them were older adult patients.
Aisha Terry, an associate professor of emergency medicine at George Washington University and the president of the board of the American College of Emergency Physicians said that “It’s a public health crisis,” as USA Today reported.
Reasons for long wait- Experts
Close to a dozen doctors and researchers depicted the chaotic situation in ERs. The statement was that the staff shortages are the reason of the situation.
Moreover, administrators are allocating additional beds for patients who undergo lucrative procedures, and thus, the ER is then filled with patients.
Moreover, the services of hospitals are in great need due to the aging population in the US. The number of patients being treated is increasing, as more people are living alone due to social isolation and are consequently relying on home health and nursing home care, which causes the delays in the discharging of the patients, according to the Yale School of Medicine’s emergency medicine chair, Arjun Venkatesh.
The effect of the long ER waiting for seniors, who are frail and have various medical problems, is especially grave.
Upon the hospital bed, certain patients finally get, their stays are longer, and the medical complications are more frequent. The team of scientists discovered that older adults face much higher fatality risks in the hospital if they are left in the ER overnight because it increases their chances of suffering from falls, infections, bleeding, heart attacks, strokes, and bedsores.
Moreover, Maura Kennedy, Mass General’s chief of geriatric emergency medicine, described an octogenarian woman with a respiratory infection who used ER care for more than 24.
Kennedy added, “She wasn’t mobilized, she had nothing to cognitively engage her, she hadn’t eaten, and she became increasingly agitated, trying to get off the stretcher and arguing with staff,” and “After a prolonged hospital stay, she left the hospital more disabled than she was when she came in.”