Yeah, I agree with the previous posters. The probability of them needing fewer ER's and ER physicians, as opposed to more ER's, with the agining population and increasing usage among the general public of ER's as general clinics is almost 0 (the only way that I could see that happen is if there were some disaster that drastically decreased the total population of the US while leaving the number of ER physicians in this country in tact because they were all safely away from the disaster at some big ER conference or something). Especially in our current malpractice state and increasingingly larger number of patients that primary care physicians and specialists are trying to see per day to make up for decreasing reimbursement rates; the fact is that a lot of clinics in both primary care and specialty care will send the patients who they think might be in trouble to ER just in case even if it's just because they haven't had the time to take a full history. ER's typically become more busy around 4:30-5 pm, when physicians can no longer "squeeze" these patients into their clinics and thus just tell them to go to the ER for further w/u of whatever they are complaining of. I can only see this getting worse.
