As ER overcrowding worsens, a program helping to ease the crisis may lose funding
Hospital bed shortages mean some who go to the ER can be stuck there for days or weeks. Yet a federal program meant to ease patient boarding is about to lose its funding.
As emergency room doctors nationwide plead for help to ease patient overcrowding, the one federal program that could fix the crisis is poised to lose funding.
Across the U.S., ER patients who need to be hospitalized find themselves stuck in hallways or waiting rooms, sometimes for days or weeks, before they are able to get further care.
Marissa Long, 30, spent three days and four nights on a gurney in a busy Los Angeles ER hallway last March, separated from other sick patients just a few feet away by a thin fabric curtain.
Long, a heart transplant recipient, was showing signs of possible organ rejection: trouble breathing and falling blood pressure. She needed to be admitted to the hospital, but there were no beds available.
“People were coughing and vomiting,” Long said. “I already have a low immune system. I was scared to get sick.”
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