As a practicing anesthesiologist in Tucson and president of the Arizona Medical Association, I can tell you that Carla McClain's Sept. 16 article in the Arizona Daily Star about the collapse of the emergency care system in Tucson was frighteningly accurate and a glimpse into what's happening in emergency departments all over Arizona.

Our state's emergency care system is heading at breakneck pace toward collapse. Soon we will see the doors of the emergency departments draped with the yellow tape saying "Do Not Enter."

The problem, which started with a few specialties, has now expanded to include a wide swath of disciplines, including orthopedic surgeons, plastic surgeons, hand surgeons, ear-nose-throat physicians, neurologists, gastroenterologists and neurosurgeons. 

When doctors sounded the siren years ago anticipating this decline in the availability of specialty services, people on numerous fronts thought we were crying wolf.

However, the root causes, as pointed out in the article, have been manifesting for some time and include overburdened emergency departments, unavailable primary care appointments and overwhelmed specialists asked to practice in the most high-stress circumstances imaginable.

On top of this there is often no pay, accompanied by the threat of being sued for circumstances beyond the physician's control if the outcome is not 100 percent perfect.

Physicians and hospital staff have for years found ways through dedication, community spirit and tenacity to patch the system so it keeps operating. Now we've bandaged all the gaping wounds that we could and there are no more physicians or nurses left to stop the bleeding.

In 2006, our governor heard our warnings and appointed a special task force to look at the situation. Charged with this difficult task, the task force did what many thought impossible and developed workable, incremental solutions.

Some of these solutions are easy and some more difficult to put in place and require funding, but all have merit and should be put into action. These include compensating physicians and hospitals fairly for services rendered regardless of a patient's ability to pay; doing something to remove liability for a bad outcome that is clearly not malpractice; and increasing the number of residency training positions and work opportunities in Arizona so we can better keep pace with our rapid population growth. 

If you have either used the emergency-care system or think you might need to, then call your state legislator and/or the Governor's Office and urge them to start implementing these solutions.

If we don't act now, routinely sending critical patients to Texas or California for emergency medical treatment won't be something you imagine; it will be reality. Now that's something to fear.