Maybe They Come For The Hospital Food

The organization Integrated Care Collaboration (ICC), a nonprofit group of health care providers for low-income and uninsured patients in Texas, has released a report claiming that nine people accounted for over 2,600 hospital emergency room visits in the Austin, TX area alone over a six year period. The ICC estimates these visits cost over $3 million, and project this cost upward to over hundreds of millions of dollars nationwide. The group’s fix? Technology – the ICC believes an automated system to identify patients who abuse the system will save time, money and resources.

Two things about this report aren’t sitting well with me. The first is the statistic – nine people accounting for over 2,600 ER visits – my Spidersense usually starts to tingle when I see a figure like that, as more often than not it’s indicative of fraud. I wouldn’t be surprised if this proves to be the case once the details behind the numbers are examined. The second, the notion that technology, or universal access or any of the other big government approaches to health care currently bandied about by the administration will lower the cost of medical care. In this regard, there are few options available: reducing the amount of care provided or reducing the amount paid for care – neither of which I feel would be satisfied by the system proposed by the ICC. Ultimately, those patients would still need to be seen and treated, the costs of which would need to be picked up somewhere downstream.