Emergency Care Experts Call for Change

The nation can’t begin to build a better emergency care system unless hospital leaders commit to making the changes they can, according to participants at an Institute of Medicine workshop in Chicago.

There also is a pressing need for more federal funding for hospital emergency rooms and other elements of the emergency care system, participants said. In June, the IOM issued three reports calling for the creation of a more accountable, coordinated and regionalized system.

Workshop participants said they felt the public isn’t sufficiently aware of the problems affecting the emergency care system. The Chicago workshop was the second of four IOM sessions to disseminate information from the reports. Attendees largely were emergency care professionals.

The IOM held a workshop in Salt Lake City in September and will host a workshop in New Orleans in November and one in Washington in December.