Stranded in the ER, Seniors Await Hospital Care and Suffer Avoidable Harm

(By Judith Graham for KFF Health News)

Every day, the scene plays out in hospitals across America: Older men and women lie on gurneys in emergency room corridors moaning or suffering silently as harried medical staff attend to crises.

Even when physicians determine these patients need to be admitted to the hospital, they often wait for hours — sometimes more than a day — in the ER in pain and discomfort, not getting enough food or water, not moving around, not being helped to the bathroom, and not getting the kind of care doctors deem necessary.

“You walk through ER hallways, and they’re lined from end to end with patients on stretchers in various states of distress calling out for help, including a number of older patients,” said Hashem Zikry, an emergency medicine physician at UCLA Health. Continue reading here…

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit national health polity news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation

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