Many Patients Wait More than One Hour for ED Care

A regional study on the waiting time in US emergency departments (EDs) has shown that it is longer in poorer neighborhoods and that the average waiting time for most patients is about 56 minutes, although 42% had waiting times exceeding 60 minutes. The study was published in the January 2003 issue of the Annals of Emergency Medicine.

The researchers tracked 1,798 randomly selected emergency patients at 30 hospitals in California from their arrival at the ED until their first contact with a doctor, physician assistant, or nurse practitioner. Emergency department overcrowding has been defined as an acutely ill patient waiting more than 60 minutes to make this contact. In poorer neighborhoods, for every US$10,000 decline in per capita income within a mailing area, patients waited 10 minutes longer, regardless of whether the hospital was public or private. The researchers also found that waiting times were shorter at EDs with a greater ratio of triage nurses and doctors to emergency patients.

"We hope policy makers will use this information to begin addressing this supply-and-
demand problem, which has become particularly pressing, considering that the nation's emergency departments are vulnerable to threats ranging from bioterrorism to the current economic downturn,” said Susan Lambe, M.D., lead author of the study conducted by researchers from the University of California at Los Angeles (USA) and the VA (Veterans Administration) Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System.