This headline comes from Britain (see the link at the bottom).
Many Canadians think they can stop “inappropriate visits” to emergency departments by educating the public. They assume people need more information.
Patients need more access, not more information.
Until we design the system to offer great ways to access care that fits into patients’ lives, we will continue to have patients accessing emergency departments for concerns that could possibly be handled in private offices.
But, we can’t just demand longer office hours. We need to support physicians in the community with acute lab and X-Ray support and attract physicians to work unsociable hours. (We wouldn’t need to attract physicians to work unsociable hours if MDs had to compete for patients.)
Emergency doctors demand seven-day primary care support | GPonline.com.
P.S. If hospitals changed from their current Monday-Friday, 9-4:30 schedules to a 7 day/week approach, we would increase patient flow and patient access, too.