Roughly a third of the patients who use the Lawrence Memorial Hospital emergency department would be more effectively served in a doctor’s office or urgent-care clinic, according to a new report given to the hospital’s board of trustees Wednesday.

The emergency room, which screens patients regardless of their ability to pay, has become the primary care destination for many Americans. As more and more people gain health insurance under the Affordable Care Act and there remains a nationwide shortage of primary care doctors, this problem is expected to worsen. This prompted LMH to look into how much of an issue this is already in the hospital’s emergency department.

According to the report, about 30 percent of the patients who use the LMH emergency department do not require emergency care. They have issues such as ankle sprains, stubbed toes or dental pain. LMH does have a program in place, called Fast Track, where from about 9 a.m. to 2 a.m. a physician assistant or nurse practitioner, under the supervision of a physician, evaluates and treats those patients.

Still, those visits, like all trips to the ER, are not cheap, running from the hundreds to thousands of dollars. However, the report notes that most of these patients (40.6 percent) had private insurance. The rest had Medicare (20.6 percent), Medicaid (19.4 percent) or no insurance (19.4 percent).

On top of that, the busiest time for these less-urgent visits was between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m., hours when many primary, urgent and retail care offices are open.

Unnecessary ER visits are a drain on financial resources and the department’s ability to treat patients with true emergencies, the report notes.

The committee that wrote the report recommended raising awareness about the primary, urgent and retail care options already available in Lawrence; having emergency department staff provide information about alternative service providers; reviewing the fee for patients using the Fast Track program; expanding access at LMH primary care providers; and examining the possibility of LMH offering its own urgent care service.

“We would never turn anyone away from the emergency department,” said LMH CEO Gene Meyer. “But I think our role is educational.”

Board member Rob Chestnut noted that a possible reason for the problem locally is that Lawrence has a large population of students, many of them far away from their primary care doctors.

In other news from Wednesday’s board of trustees meeting, the board approved a 2 percent raise for Meyer, the same percentage as the rest of the hospital staff, bringing his annual salary to $473,074. Giving reasons for the decision, the board noted Meyer’s longevity with LMH (17 years as CEO) and that LMH has recently been named a high-performing hospital by several national organizations.