Chicago EDs Under Fire for Alleged Patient-Dumping
Abstract
In the waiting area of the ED at John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County, rows of seats are filling up. It's shortly before noon in Chicago, but already more than two dozen people have found a spot in this room that looks more like an impeccably clean bus station than a medical center lobby. One woman has been waiting with her daughter since early in the day, but that doesn't trouble her. The last time she was here, it took seven hours. “They are full up back there. I know it. I been here before, and they always are,” she said. This tolerant mom confesses that she wishes the snacks in the vending machines cost a bit less — her little girl is hungry — but she understands. “They got to make their money some way,” she said.FigureMoneymaking, or rather the lack of it, underpins the very controversy that ends here, at the hospital many still call by its previous name: Cook County. Why are more people than ever, from all across the city, ending up at this particular destination? Just ask David Levine, MD, the medical director of Stroger's emergency department, who has a growing stack of notes and papers from patients at other hospitals advising them to go to his ED. “I collect them,” he said matter-of-factly. The patients, largely uncomplaining, “come from all over, and they trust the care here.” But this isn't the way it is supposed to happen, not even in a facility known for service to indigent patients. EMTALA is designed, in part, to prevent patient-dumping, a phenomenon…
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