|
The American College of Emergency Physicians today released its National Report Card on the State of Emergency Medicine, giving Illinois an overall grade of a C for statewide support for emergency patients. The level of support in Illinois was higher than the overall level of support across the country with a ranking of 27 and the average U.S. state score of C-.
Download the Illinois Report Card
The Report Card highlighted Illinois’ leadership in disaster preparedness and continued commitment to improving the quality and patient safety environment for the citizens of Illinois.
William P. Sullivan, DO, JD, FACEP, ICEP President, said that the Report Card underscores the critical role that emergency medical care plays in the community, especially at a time when the national picture looks bleak: job and insurance losses, a rapidly growing senior population and a recent survey forecasting critical shortages of primary care doctors all point to escalating emergency patient populations.
“Few people think much about the availability of emergency services until they’re the ones experiencing an emergency,” Dr. Sullivan said, “but emergency care is an essential community service, one that must remain viable and efficient. Unfortunately, the safety net that emergency medicine provides is on the verge of breaking.”
Illinois scored an A- and ranked 8th in the nation in the Disaster Preparedness category, one of the five categories used to determine the grades, with the report noting that Illinois has “accomplished a great deal in the area of disaster preparedness, especially with regard to the ability to manage volunteer health professionals.”
The Report Card recognized the coordinated efforts of the Illinois Medical Emergency Response Team (IMERT) at numerous state and federal disaster responses as one of Illinois’ major assets, and also praised the state’s ability to verify credentials through an ESAR-VHP program and the additional civil liability protections it afford health care workers during a disaster.
Illinois also scored an A- in the category of Quality and Patient Safety Environment and was lauded for its continuous innovations of the statewide emergency medical systems. The report cited such benchmarks as maintaining a state trauma registry, implementing a uniform system for providing pre-arrival instructions to emergency medicine technicians, mandating the reporting of adverse events and hospital-based infections, and working to develop stroke and STEMI systems of care.
Mark Cichon, DO, ICEP President-Elect, said that the high grades in these two categories are the direct result of a strong relationship with the state public health department.
“As the Report Card demonstrates, the greatest impact on emergency services in Illinois occurs when Emergency Medicine and ICEP partner with the Illinois Department of Public Health,” Dr. Cichon said. “This collaboration is essential for maintaining the level of quality in Illinois that currently exists.”
The Report Card also illuminates the challenges facing emergency services in Illinois, including a medical liability climate marked by the highest malpractice awards in the nation, averaging $543,983. This unwelcoming environment explains why Illinois is facing a shortage of primary care physicians, on-call specialists, and other health care professionals, Dr. Sullivan said.
“The state cannot attract the professionals it needs to staff the beds and meet the needs of the community when average malpractice premiums in Illinois are the highest of any state,” Sullivan said. “Access to care in Illinois is not going to improve until the medical malpractice environment in Illinois improves. The two issues cannot be separated.”
Dr. Cichon emphasized that the Report Card is a tool that can be utilized by leaders in medicine, government, and public health to address these critical issues and create positive change.
“Every citizen has the right to receive quality emergency care in a timely and effective manner,” Dr. Cichon said. “The Report Card provides insight into how to maximize the available resources, however scarce they may be in the current economy, and develop means to generate new resources.”
Recommendations issued in the Report Card include:
· Maintain the medical liability reforms that have been enacted in the state and strive to further improve the medical liability environment in Illinois.
· Increase Medicaid reimbursement rates to help attract and retain much needed primary care physicians and emergency physicians and other specialists, while at the same time improving the quality and accessibility of care for Medicaid beneficiaries.
· Work to increase Illinois’ numbers of inpatient and psychiatric beds, both of which are less than the national average.
The new Report Card contains more than twice the measures of ACEP’s first Report Card in 2006, as well as a new category for disaster preparedness, which makes it more comprehensive, although not directly comparable to the previous Report Card. The grades were calculated based on five categories: Access to Emergency Care (30 percent), Quality and Patient Safety Environment (20 percent), Medical Liability Environment (20 percent), Public Health and Injury Prevention (15 percent) and Disaster Preparedness (15 percent).
Explore ACEP's Report Card Website
Download Complete Report Card (PDF)
Download ICEP's Talking Points for Press Calls |
