A poll released on Monday by the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) showed that the Affordable Care Act caused an increase in the number of emergency room visits since 2014. This contradicts the goal of the law, which was to reduce the number of emergency room visits.
The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, is considered the most significant overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system since Medicare and Medicaid. From the time when the law took effect, 11 million Americans were added on the coverage and the uninsured rate dropped by 6.1 percent from 2013. However, it also turned out that many Americans are now visiting the emergency rooms, which lawmakers didn't expect since people are provided with better access to primary care.
More than 2,000 doctors participated in the ACEP poll nationwide, and 28 percent of them confirmed that they are handling more ER patients now, 47 percent said that there is a slight increase, while less than half don't see any difference.
So, what is really happening?
"They don't have anywhere to go but the emergency room," ACEP President Mike Gerardi, an emergency physician in New Jersey, told USA TODAY. "This is what we predicted. We know people come because they have to."
It turns out that there aren't enough primary care doctors. Another issue is that some doctors are unwilling to accept Medicaid patients because of the low reimbursement rates. Patients who initially sought for primary care doctors were given an average of two weeks wait time for their appointment, leaving them with no choice but to rush to the emergency rooms, according to the Wall Street Journal.
ER doctors are now handling non-emergency cases, and the volume continues to rise. Seven out of 10 doctors from the poll said that they aren't ready for such volume. As a result, patients experience longer wait times and this could result in higher mortality rates. ER volume climbed by 10 percent in 2013 and 20 percent for the first few months of 2015.
"Physicians are working more shifts - that pushes them a lot," Nicholas Vasquez, a medical director for an emergency department in Mesa, Ariz., told the Wall Street Journal. "If they work too much, they get burnt out. For patients, it means longer waits."
