Emergency Room

Nearly 10,000 people in West Baltimore are diagnosed each year with new cases of diabetes, hypertension and other treatable, chronic health conditions — enough to fill 24 jumbo jets. These illnesses will kill many of them and complications will disable others who may end up in wheelchairs or have limbs amputated because they didn't get the proper medical care. This is the evidence the West Baltimore Primary Care Access Collaborative, a coalition of 16 hospitals and nonprofit organizations, gave state health officials as they sought to join a state program that provides financial incentives in an effort to curb health disparities in the state through the creation of special zones.

Gov. Martin O'Malley's gun control bill faces a crucial test this week, when it is expected to receive committee votes in the House of Delegates. Although the legislation passed the Senate with strong support - and despite polling showing the vast majority of Marylanders approve of its key elements - it has produced some grumbling in the House, and not just from Republicans, who have stood unified in opposition to the measure. Lawmakers are likely to consider a host of amendments to the legislation, some of which are reasonable and some of which are not. Perhaps the trickiest area of the legislation is the standard it sets for who, by virtue of mental illness, should be prevented from buying a gun. Existing state law prohibits purchases by those who are found not criminally responsible or incompetent to stand trial because of mental illness - those provisions are not controversial - and anyone who has spent 30 consecutive days in an inpatient mental health facility.

The House Appropriation Committee officially killed a bill requesting a $500,000 grant for the expansion of the Carroll County General Hospital emergency room.The vote was expected since legislators have decided to target the $15 million normally set aside as grant moneyfor local projects to public school construction.CCGH's emergency room is too small to meet demands, said a hospital administrator.

The next time you walk into Howard County General Hospital's emergency room with a sliced finger, you may find yourself stitched up and back on the street within 60 minutes.That was the case for Robert Raines, a 46-year-old electrician who cut a tendon in his finger while working at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Forty minutes after arriving at the emergency room last week, he received four stitches and was referred to a hand specialist to reattach the sliced tendon."It's great," said the Finksburg resident, who two years ago waited several hours in the same emergency room when he shattered a bone in his right thumb.

Deborah D. Martin says it seemed like a long wait at Carroll County General Hospital's emergency room.It was.The 38-year-old Westminster resident spent more than eight hours locked in the bare, windowless "quiet room" where the emergency room staff places psychiatric patients.Her wait was nearly three times as long as the hospital's reported average emergency room wait for psychiatric patients, 2 1/2 to 3 hours.Miss Martin never protested during the wait or in subsequent interviews. But when Nancy Martin of Finksburg learned how long her daughter had spent at the emergency room, she was furious.

A person who threw chemicals on a fast-food restaurant patron in Mondawmin Mall last night forced the closure of the Johns Hopkins Hospital emergency room for nearly two hours while officials investigated the possible hazardous substance. The chemical turned out to be bleach or another cleaning agent. The victim arrived in the emergency room about 5 p.m. with skin irritation from the unknown substance, hospital spokeswoman Amy Mone said. Two hospital nurses who encountered the patient then began to experience eye irritation.

A Carroll delegate and a Carroll County General Hospital executive urged a House committee yesterday to approve a $500,000 grant for the expansion of CCGH's overburdened emergency room."

In an ideal health care system, patients with non urgent complaints would not visit urgent centers. Yet the premise of the June 18th article "Hospitals try to improve emergency wait times" is that to solve our over-crowding problem in emergency rooms we need to streamline the care. But this solution addresses only the symptom and not the underlying disorder: too many patients with non-urgent illness seek care in urgent centers. Inappropriate use of the emergency room is a public health emergency.

ELKTON - Cecil County health officials say rabies has been found in a sickly stray cat that scratched five people in downtown Port Deposit. The five people were scratched Friday. The cat was captured and euthanized at a veterinarian's office and tested. The five people have been urged to seek treatment. The cat is described as a small- to medium-sized yellow tabby. Anyone exposed to the animal in the past 10 days should go to an emergency room.

Doctor is electedWESTMINSTER -- Theodore Harrison, M.D., an Emergency Room physician at Carroll County General Hospital, has been elected to a second two-year term as president of the Maryland Chapter of the College of Emergency Room Physicians.Dr. Harrison has bachelor's and medical degrees from Washington University of St. Louis. He served his internship at the University of Southern California Medical Center and completed his residency training at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.Dr.