Crowded ERs Affect Older Adults Most

Oct. 26, 2005 — -- Unlike the images on television shows, most hospital emergency departments are not typically swamped with patients suffering from dramatic life-or-death injuries or psychotic episodes.

Instead, it's older adults who most often visit the ER for treatment of problems like infection, dehydration or high fever. They also typically have conditions (such as diabetes or memory loss) that make treatment complicated and time-consuming.

Many emergency departments already are crowded with these sorts of patients, and this problem is expected to worsen as the U.S. population ages.

What this will likely mean is more emergency departments going on "divert" -- a term hospitals and paramedics use to indicate a hospital is overcrowded and can't accept any more patients. Any incoming patients are redirected to other hospitals in the area.

"Oftentimes [diverts] take patients away from the hospital where their records are, where they're known best, where their physicians are," said Dr. Paul Biddinger, an emergency physician and director of Pre-Hospital Care at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. "That clearly is not ideal for patient care."

But what if you're the patient in the back of the ambulance? What if you can't go to the hospital where you've been a patient? While it sounds scary, there are ways to make the situation less stressful and less dangerous: