One-third of hospitals paying for specialty coverage of emergency departments

A survey conducted by the American Hospital Association finds that 31 percent of respondents reported that their institutions paid for at least some orthopaedic on-call coverage in their emergency departments (EDs) during 2006. According to The 2007 State of America’s Hospitals – Taking the Pulse, which had a 17 percent response rate among approximately 5,000 hospitals contacted, 44 percent of institutions reported increased difficulty in maintaining physician ED call coverage in orthopaedics in 2007. Additionally, 48 percent of respondents reported EDs running “at” or “over” capacity. For more information:

http://www.ahanews.com/ahanews_app/jsp/display.jsp?dcrpath=AHANEWS/AHANewsNowArticle/data/ann_070607_AHAsurvey&domain=AHANEWS

A PowerPoint file of the survey results can be downloaded from:

http://www.aha.org/aha/content/2007/PowerPoint/StateofHospitalsChartPack2007.ppt