Doctors blame wait times on low resources, economic issues

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Hipple did not receive a diagnosis by the end of the appointment, so she turned to the ER instead. She expressed that she has since “avoided” EUSHS and will likely go straight to the ER in the future.

Emory Emergency Medicine

Services Emergency Medical

Technician Max Walco (25C) said he has witnessed patients being reluctant to seek medical aid due to negative experiences with medical care.

According to Executive Director of Student Health Services Sharon Rabinovitz, EUSHS reviews each complaint about EUSHS and ensures that the student’s needs are addressed in the moment before reviewing processes to ensure that EUSHS optimizes student care.

“We are committed to responding to student feedback, complaints and concerns on an individual basis and have engaged with student groups to gather information,” Rabinovitz wrote in an email to the Wheel. “We are developing a Student Health Advisory Committee to ensure we have intentional and sustained student voices shaping services and access.”

Rabinovitz encouraged students to contact her regarding any issues with EUSHS, noting that she is not currently aware of any outstanding student concerns. She added that Emory created the associate vice president for health, well-being, access and prevention position last year to further enhance their response to heath issues and prevention.

“We recommend students make a physical appointment or other preventive care appointments such as pap smears, STI testing or contraceptive appointments to ensure proactive support, education and management to prevent illnesses,”

Rabinovitz wrote. “Early mental health support is equally as important at the early signs of impact, i.e., sadness lasting longer than previously, losing interest in activities which you previously enjoyed, difficulty concentrating.”

Long wait times are not unique to Emory. Patients with non-emergent cases will experience prolonged waits, particularly during influxes, according to Steele.

“Wait times get longer and longer because we are taking care of the high acuity patients first,” Steele said. “You don’t tend to come in and out of the ER. A lot has to be done.”

Steele recommended patients go to an urgent care center or similar facilities for issues such as sore throats, colds and fractures.

Grady Memorial Hospital Hospitalist Elizabeth MarshallSmith, who has worked in hospital medicine since 2013 and joined Grady in May 2022, recalled seeing many patients come through the Grady ER to receive dialysis, which is located in another part of the hospital. They took up social resources that could have been better allocated elsewhere, such as receptionists who were delayed in intaking ER patients while checking in and guiding dialysis patients, Marshall-Smith said.

Patients’ wait time extends beyond the waiting room, according to Marshall-Smith. She has witnessed patients waiting as long as 48 hours in the ER after initial intake because there were no available beds on the floor.

Marshall-Smith added that shortterm bed and observation areas at Grady would benefit patients who do not need to stay in the hospital longer than 48 hours, but still require more than a couple hours of care. Moving a patient into this unit would open up a bed and provider in the ER.

Although hospitals would benefit from hiring more physicians, Marshall-Smith stated that the real issue is that hospitals lack the resources to move patients to beds in appropriate units of the hospital, so they are stuck waiting in the ER.

Economic issues

Another prominent factor in ER wait times is that patients “simply don’t have the money” to afford primary care, according to Marshall-Smith. According to the Commonwealth Fund, 15.7% of Georgia adults reported receiving no medical care due to cost. For every 100,000 deaths in Georgia, 106 result from a lack of health care.

Marshall-Smith explained that not receiving primary care causes

Continued from Page 1 we have worked so hard for and is so necessary, given the situation where we are right now in terms of understanding the inequities in America, how we got here and how we get out,” Anderson wrote in a press release.

Stewart noted that Emory’s program will have the largest collection of African American studies Ph.D. faculty in the United States. The program will be staffed by 14 core faculty from the African American studies department, as well as a network of over 40 affiliated graduate faculty from the Emory College of Arts and Sciences, the Candler School of Theology, the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing and the Rollins School of Public Health.