As a result, most hospitals have been begging ambulance services to divert patients elsewhere and are resorting to desperate measures to house those who do come in.

Emergency rooms remained open, but the hospital instructed city ambulances to divert patients to other medical centers.

By diverting patients from conventional medicine the remedies could even lead patients health to deteriorate, they insisted.

As a result the chain, which says it has done nothing illegal, is losing business as insurers divert patients to other hospitals.

Changes in the practice and financing of medicine are diverting patients from general hospitals to specialized centers for outpatient surgery, cancer therapy and diagnostic testing.

To cut costs, they merged, closed wings, laid off workers and established outpatient clinics to divert patients from expensive emergency room and inpatient care.

Many hospitals in the region are part of corporate networks, which have made plans for diverting patients from one hospital to another in an outbreak.

Ambulances divert patients from one hospital to another.

Yet many other hospitals are reluctant to divert patients there because heart attack patients are so lucrative.

There is now a shortage of nurses and home health aides, who are needed to divert patients, young and old, from institutions.