Uninsureds crowd ERs for routine care

Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2001 | 11:12 a.m.

A high number of uninsured Las Vegans are using overcrowded emergency rooms as their primary source of health care, a national study shows.

Uninsured Las Vegans reported high emergency room use -- 89 percent at Sunrise Hospital and 84 percent at the University Medical Center -- for everyday health needs, compared with 77 percent of uninsured people surveyed in 23 other cities nationwide by the Access Project, a national health care initiative.

The survey also found there is a language barrier at local hospitals, with 33 percent of the mostly Hispanic respondents -- 90 percent at UMC and 86 percent at Sunrise -- saying that an interpreter was not available.

Also, more than 20 percent of Las Vegans surveyed said they were in debt to the two local hospitals and would not go back because they owed money -- 7 percent above the national average, the survey said.

"We are much higher (with uninsured people using emergency rooms for primary care) than in other cities," Paul Brown, Southern Nevada director of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, said Friday on "POV Vegas," the Sun's TV news discussion show on Las Vegas ONE, Cox cable channels 1 and 39.

PLAN, an activist group for the poor and disabled, collaborated on the survey.

"This clearly is a real concern if (people with) colds or just minor problems are going to emergency rooms for their primary health care," Tom Reilly of the Clark County Health Access Consortium said on on the show. "Not only is it costly, but it doesn't establish a relationship or continuity with a doctor."

Reilly said in Nevada 250,000 people -- including 80,000 under 18 -- do not have health insurance. And, he said, a good number of them are from working families where either the employer is too small to offer health insurance or the premiums are to high to insure all family members.

Reilly told moderator Mark Shaffer one possible solution to the problem would be more federally supported community-based clinics.

"This is troublesome," said Carol Pryor, policy analyst for the Access Project, which is based in Boston, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and works in partnership with Brandeis University and the Collaborative for Community Health Development.

"Las Vegas is experiencing a crisis in its emergency room care -- there just aren't enough beds. This may disproportionately affect the uninsured, who often rely on emergency rooms for their everyday medical needs."

The survey also found that UMC and Sunrise were more open to accepting poor, uninsured patients, even if they were unable to pay for the care, compared with facilities in other cities.

The Access Project, which estimates that 43 million Americans are without health insurance, surveyed 10,000 uninsured people around the country, including 300 in Las Vegas.