Every day patients flock to EDs with sore throats, headaches, and other non-emergent problems that are more in line with what you would expect a primary care provider (PCP) to handle.
Mental health experts believe that as with many acute medical conditions such as stroke and heart attack, early diagnosis and treatment can make a critical difference for patients with schizophrenia, potentially limiting the severity and progression of the disease.
Emergency departments in the United States are frequently confronted with trauma patients with varying degrees of injury.
As a group, I find most emergency physicians skeptical of many of the "advanced" technologies used to treat chronic diseases. I attribute this to our biased experience with these patients; those who do well are not likely to come to the ED very often.
