A new survey of 60 communities has gone against the general notion and has shown that uninsured Hispanics and immigrants are not overstrain the emergency rooms in hospitals in the US.
It was reported that previous reports had stated that most of the Hispanics were uninsured and because of this they usually let their conditions worsen to the point where they would be forced to go to the emergency room at hospitals.The new study, by the Center for Studying Health System Change, an independent Washington think tank, which is to be published in the trade journal Health Affairs, had conducted extensive studies at Miami-Dade and 59 other regions, concentrating in a greater detail on 13 of them. The study seemingly indicated that at least in this one category Miami-Dade's healthcare costs are not among the highest in the nation. The author, Peter Cunningham, after surveying 46,000 people in 60 communities, has found that the highest ER usage was in Cleveland and Boston, which were two cities with very low percentages of those uninsured.
Cunningham, in an interview, said, "These are areas of large employers, with a lot more union jobs, more private health insurance benefits and, at least in the case of Massachusetts, there's also been a very strong tradition of public programs, such as Medicaid." The study conducted by Cunningham had concentrated on surveys by telephone and in person during 2003. It was explained that he calculated only the ER visits that did not lead to hospital admissions, as he wanted to extensively examine the ER usage that might have been treated in doctors' offices or urgent care centres.
