The first-ever National Report Card on the State of Emergency Medicine cites the US emergency care system with overcrowding, declining access to care, soaring liability costs and a poor capacity to deal with public health or terrorist disasters.
The nation's emergency medical care system received an overall grade of C-, which represents the average of grades for all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
American College of Emergency Physicians used a range of available data to develop 50 measures for grading each state on a scale of A through F for its support in four areas: Access to Emergency Care, Quality and Patient Safety, Public Health and Injury Prevention, and Medical Liability Environment.
Frederick C. Blum, MD, says, "Our report found the nation's support for emergency medical care is mediocre or worse. Most Americans would not accept mediocre treatment or mediocre medicines; they also should not accept mediocre support of an emergency medical system that they expect to be of the highest quality when their lives hang in the balance. In a nation that has prided itself on providing the highest-quality medical care in the world, anything less than an A is unacceptable."
During the investigation, no state received an overall A grade, however California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the District of Columbia, all earned the highest overall B grades.
