Use of Hospital Emergency Room In Relation to Use of Private Physicians.

The article discusses the health and social circumstances surrounding the use of a hospital emergency room in a suburban, semi-rural area by families with and without their own primary care physicians to define needed changes in hospital policy and procedures. The data suggest that certain strategies that have been proposed for dealing with the crisis in the volume and in the urgent, non-urgent mix of hospital emergency room use may have limited applicability to hospital-community situations. The accessibility of the hospital emergency room serves to supplement the limited range and availability of services that solo practitioners can provide.