Hearing on HHS and the Nation's Emergency Room Crisis

"The many dedicated men and women who staff our ER's, trauma centers and ambulance services deserve our appreciation and our support. But when the system fails it can have fatal consequences. Earlier this week USA Today carried a front page story on the health crisis in Houston where ER's divert ambulances 20% of the time. One doctor described a aptient who died after being diverted from a Houston area hospital to one in Austin 1,600 miles away. And I quote, he said 'diversion kills you.' In my hometown of Baltimore a City Health Department study documented that between 2002 and 2005, the total hours city hospitals were on red alert status, meaning that they had no cardiac-monitored beds for arriving ER patients, increased by 36%... "

"One of the big problems that we are facing, I think, in this country is an explosion in the volume of patients we're seeing. In my area, for example, we've had tremendous growth in population because of construction. And I understand that we're not the only area of the country that's seeing that kind of explosion, but one of the problems that we're seeing is the lack of infrastructure to support that explosion in population growth. So as a result we are confronted with the issue of overwhelmed, overcrowding, every day."

"Mr. Chairman, I believe that you're looking at the proverbial canary in the mine right now, you're looking at him face-to-face. Because I'm here to tell you that when I take my last breath in that emergency department it will be when that system completely falls apart and I'm on my last breath right now, I'm telling you right now. So we are the canaries, the emergency physicians and nurses and personnel are -- I mean I've had some of my best nurses leave my department, which is I believe one of the best departments in California, to go to other areas of the hospital like the Cath lab where they can get paid the same salary for half the work."