ER Volume Increase - Wisconsin

I found this investigative report interesting. The Appleton, WI Post-Crescent used the CDC ED Overcrowding stats as a jumping off point for an investigative report. A prefect fit for a "Non-Urban EM" blog. I've excerpted it below:

In researching one year of ER admission information for the five-county region’s 12 hospitals, the newspaper found, among other things:

• Residents made more than 196,000 visits to ERs, equal to about 30 percent of the population, between October 2003 and September 2004. The national rate is about 39 percent.

• Ear infection was the most common reason, accounting for about 3 percent of all visits.

Fifty-three percent of those patients were age 3 or younger.

• Fifteen percent of the visits were by Medicaid patients, and about 13 percent were by self-pay, or uninsured patients.

• The average ER visit cost $558.