House panel holds hearing on emergency medical care

CAL/AAEM News Service calaaem_news at yahoo.com
Sat Aug 5 15:59:16 PDT 2006


House panel holds hearing on emergency medical care

Source: American Hospital Association (http://www.ahanews.com)
Date: July 27, 2006


Testifying today before the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, Gail Warden,
president emeritus of Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, urged Congress to adopt
recommendations from a recent Institute of Medicine report to address rising demand and
inadequate capacity in the nation's emergency care system. Warden, who chaired the IOM
committee that developed the report and is a former AHA chair, called for Congress to
establish a demonstration program that would regionalize the delivery of emergency and
trauma services to ensure patients get to the right hospital and on-call specialists are
available to treat them. In addition, he said Congress should establish a lead federal
agency to oversee emergency care services, and increase emergency care funding and
research, among other recommendations. Alan Kelly, vice president of Scottsdale (AZ)
Healthcare, urged the panel to address concerns related to providing emergency care to
undocumented immigrants and the shortage of on-call physicians, while Alan Levine,
president of North Broward Hospital District in Fort Lauderdale, FL, described how the
nursing shortage and medical liability crisis impact emergency care. All of the witnesses
also expressed concern with a provision in the House immigration bill that could subject
to criminal prosecution hospital workers who treat undocumented immigrants.


Cyrus Shahpar & Brian Potts 
Managing Editors, CAL/AAEM News Service
University of California, Irvine

The CAL/AAEM Archives are available at: http://maillists.uci.edu/mailman/public/calaaem/


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