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Florida Loses Ground in ER Report Card

A new report card on emergency care shows Florida ranking poorly- even receiving an F in one category. The report card doesn't look at the kind of care received in emergency rooms, but rather the conditions surrounding emergency care in our state.

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The 2014 American College of Emergency Physicians’ report card measures things like access to emergency care, public health and injury prevention and disaster preparedness. Florida received a C-minus overall, and a ranking of 27th.  Florida Hospital Celebration Health Emergency Physician Vidor Friedman is also a board member for the American College of Emergency Physicians.  He says one of the things affecting Florida’s grade is a physician shortage due to our medical malpractice environment and low Medicaid reimbursements.  Insufficient hospital capacity is another.

“So some of these things could be dealt with perhaps on an individual hospital level, but much of them require, as a state, we need legislative fixes for some of these problems, he says.

The report card was last issued in 2009- and Florida received a C-minus then too. But Friedman says this time around we lost ground in several key areas of concern. For instance,  Florida received an F for access to emergency care, ranking it 49th in the nation in that category.  

 

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