Deferred care for patients in the emergency department

In this issue, Washington and colleagues describe a system designed to identify persons in an emergency department who have symptoms related to abdominal and pelvic pain, musculoskeletal pain, or respiratory infection and meet criteria for deferred care. The deferred care approach is one solution to the complex problem of emergency department overcrowding that faces many busy urban centers. A better overall solution would be widespread availability of timely and effective ambulatory care, based on continuous physician-patient relationships.