Exodus of specialists from ERs raises concerns - Southern California

Teaching hospitals have an advantage, but not so for community hospitals...and if the proposed Medi-Cal cuts go in to place...well chances of finding a specialist might become slim and none...and most of the physicians are electronically tied to the hospitals...stop and think about their lifestyle...that's a bit of stress in itself...how many hours can they dedicate before they run out of hours to sleep...BD

When Dr. Mark I. Langdorf began practicing emergency medicine more than 20 years ago, finding a specialist to help with a complicated case was easy. Newly minted surgeons and fledgling ear, nose and throat doctors would show up in the emergency room with boxes of doughnuts, hoping to pick up patients and build their practices.
Today, specialists not only have dumped the doughnuts, they've abandoned emergency rooms in droves. One more sign of a deteriorating safety net, their exodus is both a cause and a result of the backlogs that plague hospital emergency rooms across Southern California. Their dwindling numbers affect the uninsured and the insured alike.

California hospitals don't directly employ physicians. Under a state law that seeks to limit hospital pressure on a doctor's professional judgment, hospitals contract with emergency physicians or physician groups, who do their own billing. (The law does not apply to university and county hospitals.)

Exodus of specialists from ERs raises concerns - Los Angeles Times