Thursday, August 6, 2009

5-hour average emergency room wait statewide

From Crain's:

A new national study shows that New Yorkers were waiting for hours to be seen by doctors even before the fear of H1N1 flu—and actual cases of the disease—had patients jamming New York’s emergency departments this spring.

In fact, New York’s emergency-department waits in 2008 were among the longest in the United States, according to Press Ganey Associates, an Indiana-based consulting firm that many hospitals hire to assess patient satisfaction. Patients in New York state sat for an average of 288 minutes, nearly five hours, before being seen. That was enough to rank it a dismal 46th. The shortest average wait, 172 minutes, was in South Dakota.

Responding to concerns from patients, the New York state Department of Health has begun visiting a random selection of hospitals to learn whether the long waits are continuing, but officials could not provide recent figures on wait times.


Oh for Christ sakes. The answer is YES.

Hey, I have an idea... Let's pack a million more people into the city while allowing more hospitals to close!

That oughtta take care of the problem.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nothing will happen until a famous person has a serious medical emergency in LIC, then gets stuck in traffic on the bridge rushing to Lennox Hill, and dies en route.

Sanke Plissskin said...

This is inexcusable.

The medias response to this is criminal.

(but we do need to discuss at lenght the Yankee bullpen, and Kate and Jon's dating habits.)

-Joe said...

Only 5 Hours, I was expecting more.
Wait till Obama and the Supreme court Dems pass amnesty bills and 70 million more perpetually pregnant parasites rush the border.

These people refuse to use birth control are bankrupting this country like they did back home or like places in Africa

triage nurse said...

Give me your tired...your poor...your huddled masses waiting to use the emergency room as their doctors' office!

"Kachoo!
I think I've got a cold...por favor".

Anonymous said...

This is our vaunted healthcare system in America today. Imagine that we pioneered things like Heart Transplants but you can drop dead in the Emergency room while waiting to be seen.

Perhaps we can get troops of Boy Scout and Girl Scouts to perform first aid in the Emergency room to keep the patients alive until they are seen.