To the estimated half a million visitors it attracts each year, the Big Fresno Fair is synonymous with carnival rides, fried food, and horse racing. But to hospitals, the fair means something completely different: fewer visits to the emergency room. Joyce Eden, director of emergency services at Saint Agnes Medical Center, says she was recently talking about it with a colleague. “I said ‘watch it for the next two weeks, my numbers will be lower for the next couple weeks,’” she says. “And so far they have been.” Eden says ER visits decrease noticeably every year during the fair, a trend confirmed by an emergency physician at Community Regional Medical Center. Eden estimates Saint Agnes’s ER visits fall by around 15 percent. As to why, Eden can only speculate, but she suspects it has to do with the fact that many people use ERs for their primary care, coming in with flare-ups in chronic ailments like diabetes and kidney disease. But they’ll drop everything—even health care—to go to the
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