Aurora, Il. – In his mother’s house in Illinois, Tracy Balhan flips through his father Bill Spier. In a picture, he smiled in front of a bucket of beer sweat and wore a blue t-shirt that is written, “pops. The man. Myth. Legend.”
Balhan’s father died after fighting with Dementia last year. During the end of life at the end of life, he was so excited that he tried to get out of a moving car. Balhan remembers his father – bigger than life, steady and loving – shout at the top of his lungs.
His Jeriatric psychiatrist suggested that he took a patient to the Edward Hospital of Edward Hospital in Naparville, Neparville, in the suburbs of the suburbs because of a connection to a patient behavioral care unit. He hoped that it would help him get the referral quickly.
However, the speaker spent 12 hours in the emergency room – at one point restrained by staff – waiting for a mental evaluation. Balhan did not know it then, but his father’s experience at the hospital is so common that it has a name: ER boarding.
As a result of one out of six in the emergency department in 2022, the hospital was admitted four or more hours, according to an associated press and side effects according to public media data analysis. Analysis has shown that fifty percent of patients who ride for any time were 65 years of age or older.
Healthcare experts say some people who are not in the middle of the emergency emergency of life can wait a few weeks.
ER boarding is a sign of the struggle for the US health care system, in which the entrance points for patients outside the ERS are shrinking points and the priority hospitals for the processes often pay more.
Experts have also warned that the boarding issue will be worse because the number of people in the United States, including Dementia in the coming decades, is increasing in the United States with 655 years or older. Hospital bed power cannot continue in the United States. Between 20 and 2021, the number of hospital beds was fixed, even at the same time the emergency department inspection increased from 30% to 40% at the same time.
For older people with dementia, boarding can be especially dangerous, Chicago -based Jeriatric psychiatrist Dr Shafi Siddiqui says. A research letter published in the Journal of the American Medical Association was observed in June 2021, and it was found that long AR locations could be associated with the high risk of developing the demeania patients – a temporary state of mental confusion and sometimes hallucinations.
Dr Vicky Norton, elected president of the American Academy of Emergency Medicine, said, “People need to be angry about the boarding.”
National emergency physician groups have planned for years to control boarding. Although they have made some progress, despite the concern that it leads the patient to the worse results, nothing has changed enough.
Dr Alison Haddock, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, says the failure of the entire healthcare system published in the boarding ER, so it demands a systematic procedure to solve it.
About five years ago, Federal and State policy decisions limit the number of hospital beds, said Arjun Venkatesh, an emergency medicine study by Yel. People are now living for a long time, as a result of a more complex illness.
The American Hospital Association said that in 2021, there were 965,000 stuffed hospital beds compared to 913,000. And another Jama-research letter published in February shows that the US post-Pandemic has less than 16% of the worker bed.
Patients such as “prescribed care” can be given priority for patients who need non-surgery methods such as cancer care or orthopedic surgery. Haddock said hospitals pay more for this surgery, so hospitals are unlikely to move patients to that bed – even with the filling of the emergency rooms.
Although the emergency department has long accommodated, there is no good data that finds the ultimate, emergency medicine experts say.
Medicare and Medicaid Services centers have recently finished a requirement that hospitals track the time for “Midian” in their emergency departments. A consultant group that develops quality steps for CMS suggests that the company will try to capture the long emergency department more accurately. This measure has recently been submitted to CMS, which may choose to accept it.
Patients’ families fear that the long emergency room can make things worse for their loved ones, forcing some support and limited options for changes for care.
Nancy is in Kankaki, Illinoi, with her husband Michael Riman, who has dementia.
Last year, he said that he had gone to the emergency department several times, often more than four hours and in more than 10 cases in one case, before finally getting access to any behavioral care bed. Riverside refuses to comment in the Reman’s case.
While waiting long, Fregue does not know what she can assure her husband.
“It is difficult for anyone to be in ER enough, but I can’t think of anyone with dementia,” he said. “He just kept saying ‘When am I going? What’s going on?”
From November, Rimon Kankaki is going to the MCA Senior Adult Day Center. Freigo said that Rimon treats the day center like his work, vacuum and proposes to clean, but come to a happy home after spending time away from other people and home.
In Illinois, adult day centers are lower than county and other resources are also shrinking for people with dementia. A report by the American Health Care Association and the National Center for Assistant Living shows that one thousand nursing homes in the United States have closed between 20 and 2022. At least 5 behavioral health centers, which are specialized in the treatment of mental health problems, have closed in 2021.
After the discharge, with less space for patients, hospital beds have been used for a long time, increasing the boarding problem. Getting a special hospital bed is becoming more difficult, especially when patients cause dementia aggression.
This was the case for Balhan’s father, who was gradually excited while he was in his ER. Hospital staff told Balhan that the behavioral care unit was not accepting patients with dementia, so the speaker was stuck in ER for 24 hours until they were separated from the health system without getting any behavioral health facilities.
Although the hospital did not comment on the specific situation of the spier, Endevo Health spokesman Spencer Walrath said that its behavioral care unit usually acknowledges Jeriatric psychiatry patients, including dementia sufferers, depending on the cause of the bed and the need for the patient’s specific treatment.
Balhan thinks that the US health care system failed to treat his father as a man.
“I didn’t feel that he was treating any dignity as a person,” he said. He said. “If something may change then that’s what I want to see.”
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AP Data journalist Kasturi Pannjadi contributed to this report.
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This story is the cooperation of a health report of NPR member stations throughout the side effects of the side effects and a cooperation between Associated Press. Associated Press Health and Science Department has received the support of the Science and Educational Media Group and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation of the Hughes Medical Institute.
