Group Attacks Patient ‘Dumping’ Emergency Rooms Accused Of Dismissing Poor Patients Without Treatment

A health advocacy group warned Monday that hospital emergency rooms are “dumping” underinsured patients, with sometimes tragic results.

The group, Public Citizen, cited the case last year of a 2-year-old Massachusetts girl whose mother brought her to an emergency room in Southbridge suffering from nausea, diarrhea, and 103.2-degree temperature. Without examining her, emergency room attendants referred the girl to a private practice.

Hours later, an ambulance brought the unidentified girl back to the emergency room. She died that evening.

Public Citizen released a report based on data from the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) that documented hundreds of cases similar to the Massachusetts girl’s.

Hospitals who transfer patients or refuse to treat them at a risk to their health violate a 1986 federal law designed to prevent the poor from being denied basic care.

It is unclear how many cases resulted in death, but government inspectors found women in labor being sent off in taxis, and elderly people and children being dismissed without treatment.

The report’s authors said that in most cases, the patient was either uninsured or the patient’s managed care organization refused to authorize necessary emergency room procedures.

“This is an incredible indictment of the American medical profession,” said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, co-author of the report and director of Public Citizen Health Research Group.

“Sick patients are treated like hot potatoes because no one wants to pay the bill,” Wolfe said.

Hospitals agree that patient dumping is largely an economic problem. But they say the health care system is to blame, not hospitals.

“The fact is that the nation’s hospitals are the family doctors for the uninsured,” said Rick Wade, a spokesman for the American Hospital Association. “There are inappropriate decisions made, but by and large, we are caring for the uninsured because no one will.”

Wade noted that in 1996, hospitals spent $17.5 billion caring for patients that couldn’t pay. These are costs that they will never recover, he said.

Wade said that considering there were 95 million emergency room visits in 1996, the 264 violations detailed in the report are not representative of what typically goes on in emergency rooms.