Hospital ERs overwhelmed, one-day study finds

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A one-day snapshot of emergency room conditions at 34 U.S. hospitals shows they are all overwhelmed and none is prepared to handle a big event like a disaster or attack.

The report from the House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee, released to coincide with a hearing on Monday, shows emergency rooms in Washington and Los Angeles operating over capacity on an ordinary day. None could have handled a surge of new patients.

Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who heads the committee, used the report to illustrate why he opposes President George W. Bush's proposed cuts to the federal Medicaid program.

Bush says states need to pay more of the costs of maintaining emergency services and has proposed $18.2 billion in cuts to Medicaid over five years.

"The proposed Medicaid regulations will directly result in further reductions in hospital and ED (emergency department) capacity and, ironically, specifically target trauma centers and teaching hospitals -- the very institutions whose surge capacity we must maintain if they are to function in the time of disaster or terrorist attack," Dr. Roger Lewis of the University of California Los Angeles Medical Center told the hearing.

The survey included seven major cities -- New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago, Houston, Denver and Minneapolis.

They were all inspected on Tuesday, March 25 at 4:30 p.m. local time.

"Both of the emergency rooms in the Level I trauma centers surveyed in Washington, D.C., were operating above capacity," the report reads. That means new patients must wait in hallways, waiting rooms or offices.