Emergency departments (ED) overcrowding, long wait, and uncomfortable waiting room conditions may lower perceived quality of the patient experience and satisfaction. This study investigates the relationship between patient satisfaction and communication of expected wait times, at the point of triage. A pre-post (11/4/ 2008 – 2/5/2009) group design with convenience sample (n=1,209) of all discha...

Type-I X-ray bursts are thermonuclear flashes that take place on the surface of accreting neutron stars. The wait time between consecutive bursts is set by the time required to accumulate the fuel needed to trigger a new burst; this is at least one hour. Sometimes secondary bursts are observed, approximately 10 min after the main burst. These short wait-time bursts are not yet understood. We ob...

OBJECTIVES Even in a publicly funded health care system, access to care may be related to socioeconomic status (SES). For children, delays in surgical procedures can have profound functional, social, and psychological effects with lifelong impact. The purpose of this study was to determine whether SES was related to meeting surgical wait time access targets for children. We also assessed the ef...

CONTEXT Short patient wait times are critical for patient satisfaction with outpatient phlebotomy services. Although increasing phlebotomy staffing is a direct way to improve wait times, it may not be feasible or appropriate in many settings, particularly in the context of current economic pressures in health care. OBJECTIVE To effect sustainable reductions in patient wait times, we created a...

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...

a cancer diagnosis is anxiety provoking. Waiting for definitive treatment for cancer augments this anxiety [1-7]. Waiting for treatment also decreases patient satisfaction with their medical center and results in a poorer quality of life [4,8]. The underlying concern is whether longer wait times lead to spreading of tumor, the need for more extensive therapy and ultimately poorer survival. Ther...