Letters: Non-emergency rooms

Re “Insurance raised use of hospital ERs, study says,” Jan. 5

One logical conclusion is that hospitals need to create a more cost-effective way to handle non-emergency patients.

Hospitals would be smart to establish a parallel non-emergency, primary-care clinic adjacent to their current ERs. They could be staffed with less-expensive care deliverers such as nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants, respiratory therapists and pharmacists, still under the license of the hospital but without tying up the more expensive resources of a traditional ER.

If hospitals do not fill this void, some other smart business will. So why not just improve the hospitals’ delivery model?

Kay Brown

Laguna Hills

ALSO:

Letters: Boeing’s tax game

Letters: Despair and the mentally ill homeless

Letters: Why a cross belongs on the L.A. County seal