Heart attack patients waited eight minutes in 1997 but 20 minutes in 2004

ER waits dangerously long in U.S.: study | Tue Jan 15, 2008 11:45am EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Patients seeking urgent care in U.S. emergency rooms are waiting longer than in the 1990s, especially people with heart attacks, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.

They found a quarter of heart attack victims waited 50 minutes or more before seeing a doctor in 2004. Waits for all types of emergency department visits became 36 percent longer between 1997 and 2004, the team at Harvard Medical School reported.

Especially unsettling, people who had seen a triage nurse and been designated as needing immediate attention waited 40 percent longer -- from an average of 10 minutes in 1997 to an average 14 minutes in 2004, the researchers report in the journal Health Affairs.

Heart attack patients waited eight minutes in 1997 but 20 minutes in 2004, Dr. Andrew Wilper and colleagues found. ...
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"Emergency physicians have said for years that crowding and long wait times are hurting our patients -- insured and uninsured equally," ACEP president Dr. Linda Lawrence said in a statement.

"Ever-lengthening waits are a frightening trend because any delays in care can make the difference between life and death for some patients. The number of emergency patients is increasing while the number of hospital beds continues to drop. It is a recipe for disaster." ...