Maryland tackles emergency care crisis

Abstract

Emergency medical care is something few Americans think about until a person or a family member is severely injured or incurs a sudden critical illness, said Maryland emergency medicine physician Aisha T. Liferidge. However, she said, most emergency departments (EDs) are operating at or near full capacity and struggling to handle their daily load of patients. ED overcrowding results in patients sometimes sitting for hours in waiting rooms or admitted patients being held in hallways and other ED areas until inpatients beds become available, a practice known as boarding. Overcrowding impedes practitioners’ ability to provide the best possible care to patients, Liferidge said. But, she said, ED overcrowding is not a problem for the emergency care community to solve alone. “It is a systemwide problem,” she said, and ultimately, a national problem that must be tackled together by lawmakers, patients, and the health care community. “Because it is a systems issue, we all have to vow to work together” to fix the overcrowding problem and other issues that impede patient care, said Liferidge, who practices emergency medicine at Washington County Hospital in Hagerstown, Maryland.