Overcrowded emergency rooms can be fatal for Latinos and other minorities living in populated neighborhoods, suggests a study published in the journal Health Affairs.
Because minorities — Hispanics in particular — have low rates of health insurance, the emergency room has become a primary resource for medical care regardless of the severity of the medical issue. The process crowds emergency rooms and in turn emergency services become scarce, resulting in ambulance diversion, says study author Renee Y. Hsia, MD, assistant professor of emergency medicine at University of California, San Francisco. Ambulance diversion refers to a process in which an ambulance is turned away from a hospital, and redirected to the nearest one instead, because they cannot take any more emergency patients. READ MORE
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