Psychiatric Studies of Patient Needs in Emergency Services of General Hospitals

Abstract

THE RECENT GROWTH of emergency treatment services in the general hospitals of large urban centers seems to be related to two factors of social change: the increasing ghettoization of inner city populations; and the flight of physicians to suburbia and exurbia in the wagon-trains of their more prosperous clientele, creating a medical care vacuum for the slum poor. The emergency services have been left to fill the vacuum. Our New Haven findings indicate that 85 to 90 per cent of all ER patients are in the lowest socioeconomic groups, i.e., they are poor by any standards, and they are medically indigent.5 To serve its new and growing population adequately, the ER will have to identify its task realistically, and reorganize its program to meet the demands its patient population presents. The emergency service of the general hospital, as now organized, is uniquely adapted to fail in such an undertaking. It is an accommodation designed for the transient. It was established to as-