| News from the American College of Surgeons For Immediate Release |
Contact: Sally Garneski 312-202-5409 or |
ACS Releases Comprehensive Report on Emergency Care Crisis
CHICAGO: This week, the American College of Surgeons (ACS) released a comprehensive report, “A Growing Crisis in Patient Access to Emergency Surgical Care,” which outlines in depth the serious problems surgeons and their patients are facing due to the virtual collapse of the nation’s emergency care system.
The College believes that the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) three reports on the future of this nation’s emergency care system--Hospital-Based Emergency Care: At the Breaking Point; Emergency Medical Services: At the Crossroads; and Emergency Care for Children: Growing Pains--provide a much needed wake-up call for all Americans because each and every individual in this country could face an unexpected, life-threatening injury or disease at some point in their lives. Health system changes, declining availability of specialists to take emergency call, increased medical liability exposure, and limited reimbursement have stressed surgical practice to the point that a looming shortage of surgeons is likely to occur, the College reports, which may jeopardize patients’ likelihood of receiving surgical care when they are in the most dire and extreme of circumstances.
In addition to threat this situation poses to emergency patients every day in communities throughout the United States, the ACS believes that this nation’s commitment to disaster preparedness and response in the post 9-11/Hurricane Katrina era must include patient access to prompt acute care services in our nation’s emergency departments.
In its report, the College calls on Congress to:
- Reauthorize the Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) Trauma-EMS Program by passing S. 265 and H.R. 5555.
- Amend scholarship and loan repayment programs designed to recruit physicians to provide care in underserved areas to also help encourage surgeons to practice in these settings.
- Address the liability issues that discourage specialists from taking emergency call.
- Review a variety of mechanisms (tax credits or deductions) to improve the reimbursement issues for uncompensated, EMTALA-related care.
Since its inception almost a century ago, the American College of Surgeon has been dedicated to improving the care of the surgical patient and to the ethical and competent practice of surgery. The College recognizes the existing health care system’s strengths, acknowledges its limitations and weaknesses and looks forward to working with legislators at the federal, state, and local level to ensure that high-quality, acute care patient services are not compromised.
A copy of the report is posted online at: http://www.facs.org/ahp/emergcarecrisis.pdf (400K PDF).
The American College of Surgeons is a scientific and educational organization of surgeons that was founded in 1913 to raise the standards of surgical practice and to improve the care of the surgical patient. The College is dedicated to the ethical and competent practice of surgery. Its achievements have significantly influenced the course of scientific surgery in America and have established it as an important advocate for all surgical patients. The College has more than 71,000 members and is the largest organization of surgeons in the world.
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Online June 23 , 2006
Revised