ANALYSIS: HOSPITAL TURF WAR GETS ITS HEARING -
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Published on: 11/4/2001
Last Visited: 11/5/2001
They were not the answer people thought they would be , said Dr. Robert Derlet , chief of emergency medicine at the University of California at Davis.
The nation simply needs more emergency room space and more hospital beds , Derlet said.The population is growing , the number of people older than 60 is exploding , and the number of chronically ill people will increase exponentially over the next 10 years.Medical technology is keeping alive people who a decade ago would have died.They turn up in the emergency room with cancer complications , kidney problems , diabetes or something gone awry with their prosthesis.
I must see a ( prosthetic ) hip a day in the emergency room , Derlet said.
New technology also means it takes longer to treat emergency room patients.Fifty years ago an emergency room doctor relied on his hands and a stethoscope.Today he's using an MRI , calling in an infectious disease expert and ordering a battery of tests.
I think one of the errors in this country over the last 10 years is we have not invested a lot in our infrastructure.We haven't built highways , we haven't built sewers , we haven't built hospitals , Derlet said.My vote would be build a new hospital..
The outcome