Wait times in the emergency department for patients with mental illness

Advertising Emergency Department Wait Times

Advertising emergency department (ED) wait times has become a common practice in the United States. Proponents of this practice state that it is a powerful marketing strategy that can help steer patients to the ED. Opponents worry about the risk to the public health that arises from a patient with an emergent condition self-triaging to a further hospital, problems with inaccuracy and lack of st...

Association of race/ethnicity with emergency department wait times.

OBJECTIVE To determine whether wait times for children treated in emergency departments (EDs) nationally are associated with patient race/ethnicity. METHODS Data were obtained from the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, which collects information on patient visits to EDs throughout the United States. We examined data for patients < or =15 years of age who presented to EDs durin...

Rural-urban differences in emergency department wait times.

INTRODUCTION I sought to determine whether emergency department (ED) volume is associated with differing ED wait times. METHODS I conducted a retrospective analysis of the Emergency Department Reporting System database of the Ontario Ministry of Health. I abstracted ED length of stay for patient visits to 117 hospital EDs during the second quarter of 2008, representing 89% of ED visits in the...

Children's Mental Health Visits to the Emergency Department: Factors Affecting Wait Times and Length of Stay

Objective. This study explores the association of patient and emergency department (ED) mental health visit characteristics with wait time and length of stay (LOS). Methods. We examined data from 580 ED mental health visits made to two urban EDs by children aged ≤18 years from April 1, 2004, to March 31, 2006. Logistic regressions identified characteristics associated with wait time and LOS usi...

Unacceptable emergency wait times.