They are nothing to his spontaneous correspondence with Trajan, where one learns of routine problems, for instance with Christians confronting a provincial governor in Bithynia.
It is one of many drugs that put the drug companies in an awkward position: They earn their largest profits when they are prescribed for routine problems of wealthy Americans and Europeans, but they could save millions of the very poor if available and affordable.
You could hypothesize, I suppose, that after the Medicaid expansion more people went to ERs for life-threatening situations and fewer for routine problems, and the two trends cancelled each other out — but then you would expect the hospitalization rate to rise even if the ER visit rate did not, because the visits themselves would reflect more serious conditions.
Many patients who do not have primary care physicians nearby use the emergency room for routine problems.
In Texas, 180 counties do not have enough physicians, 70percentt of patients cannot obtain a same-day visit with their primary care doctor, and 79percentt of emergency room visits are for routine problems, according to OptumHealth.
And while some newer research has challenged the idea that a large proportion of patients visit the emergency room for routine problems, many payers and policy makers continue to focus on these patients as a major source of wasteful spending.
In Dr. Gerdes's office, the innovations include daily clinics at lunchtime called QuickSick, in which patients who have phoned up that morning can come in for routine problems requiring immediate attention, like an upper respiratory infection, and are guaranteed they will be examined, treated and on their way within a half-hour.
As computers make the professional's arcana accessible to the layman, potential customers will increasingly handle routine problems themselves, or opt for a software-armed paraprofessional.
Had she gone to the emergency room, as many uninsured people did for routine problems before, it would have cost about $1,800, clinic officials estimated.
Additionally, most weekday admissions were for routine problems (40.1%), whereas weekend admissions were from the emergency department (44.4%).
