Almost every day, a patient comes into Dr. Arthur Sorrell’s San Francisco emergency room still wearing a wristband from another hospital nearby.

“There are folks who have a life of going from emergency department to emergency department, and that’s how their day is spent,” said Sorrell, an emergency physician and administrator at Sutter Health. “It’s sad and tragic, but that’s what happens.”

The wristband is at least a hint.

Without it, emergency room staff often have no idea they are sharing patients with other hospitals just a mile away. So they treat those patients completely independently, often repeating tests unnecessarily, assigning them multiple case managers when only one is needed and offering contradictory advice.

[For more of this story, written by Jenny Gold, go to http://californiahealthline.or...-frequent-er-visits/]