Emergency Department as the Main Source of Asthma Care

Many asthma patients use the emergency department (ED) as the sole source of asthma care. This is considered inadequate and poor practice. This prospective study revealed that young age, lack of evening clinic, forgetting to keep the appointment, conflicting priorities of daily life, and easy access to the ED on an as-needed basis for urgent care, medications, and prescriptions, and failure to use inhaled corticosteroids were significant while lack of insurance or access to asthma clinic were not significant factors in exclusive use of the ED. Establishing ED asthma education programs or an after hours asthma clinic may alleviate the practice.