Per the article "The Overuse of Hospital Emergency Departments for Primary Care"

The Overuse of Hospital Emergency Departments for Primary Care Mn'am F. Weismann, Flodda International University Heather Pierce, West Kisnda Baptist H ospjtal fa vie! H emandez-Licbtl, Baptist H ealtb South Florida Eric Wejnstoclr, Bapn'st Health South Florida It was quiet in the conference room on a sunny day in late December 2019 while the members of the Systemwide Emergency and Urgent Care Council (SWEUCC), the council for emergency services at Baptist Health South Florida (BHSF), pored over the emergency department (ED) data usage reports for four of its urban hospitals (Urban 4) for scal years 2016-2019. The overuse problem was not getting better. In fact, it was getting worse. The data showed that an increasing number of patients used the Urban 4 hospital EDs for non-urgent care and for medical conditions that could have been treated in a primary care setting. The committee was painfully aware of the consequences from reports received from its supervisory ED physicians including Dr. Joseph Scott earlier in 2018. Non-urgent care patients were overcrowding the ED resulting in long waits to be seen by a provider, and in some cases, patients left the ED after many hours without having been seen. The overcrowding added stress on ED hospital resources thereby jeopardizing the quality of the delivery of care. Historically, from a nancial standpoint, if a patient had private commercial insurance, the hospital received payments for the ED visit. Private commercial insurers, however had begun to deny payment for unnecessary ED visits to disincentivize this behavior. The burden shifted to patients to pay the expenses of the ED visit out-ofpocket. Not surprisingly, many patients could not pay the high cost of these medical bills given high policy deductibles or being underinsured. Consequently, the hospitals were sometimes left without reimbursement. Scott had explained to SWEUCC during the year leading up to this meeting that, based on his experience, many non-urgent care patients visiting the ED shared common traits. Most had a multitude of medical and social problems. The social problems usually overshadowed the medical problems. The patients shared a lack of family support, usually had some form of mental illness, possibly addiction issues, the inability to handle their own medical and social problems, and anxiety or depression. Anxiety and depression were \"huge issues\