CHICAGO, May 3 (UPI) -- Health experts say the "worried well" are overburdening many U.S. hospitals with imagined symptoms of the H1N1 virus commonly known as swine flu.
Among them is the emergency department at Chicago Children's Memorial Hospital, which more than doubled its average number of patients last week, CNN reported Sunday.
"It was a lot of 'worried well' people," said Cathleen Shanahan, a nursing director at the hospital. "A lot of parents who were worried about the flu."
The anxiety is understandable, but the extra patients crowd out people with real emergencies, said Dr. Mark Bell, principal of Emergent Medical Associates, which operates 18 emergency clinics in California.
"I haven't seen such a panic among communities perhaps ever," Bell said. "We are spending significant time in the emergency department calming people down."
This last week, emergency clinics reported a dramatic increase in patients in New York, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Boston and Chicago, CNN reported.
