The wait at Elmhurst Hospital is a killer

From the Daily News:

The wait time for the emergency room at Elmhurst Hospital Center is in critical condition.

The average emergency room patient at the Queens facility waited 114 minutes to be seen by a doctor in 2016, according to records obtained by the Daily News.

The nearly two-hour delay was the lengthiest recorded at any of the city’s 11 public hospitals in at least the last five years — and close to four times as long as the national average of 30 minutes, according to data for 2014 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For some of the patients, the wait is actually longer than two hours.

Hospital staff attributed the lengthy delays to a lack of nurses.

At times, one nurse is responsible for up to 12 patients, said Pattie-Dean Thompson, an ER nurse.

“That leaves us running from patient to patient,” she said.

Another issue is the large number of patients with minor ailments flooding the emergency room.

The long wait time comes as the number of emergency room patients at the public hospital has decreased, records show.

Waiting for care at Queens hospitals could kill you

From the Queens Tribune:

The status of hospitals in Queens has been a major topic for years, notably the care that’s given to patients. Patients being treated in hallways, wait times in the emergency care units and the short staff within the hospitals have topped the list of problems.

Emergency Room times in Queens hospitals can be anywhere from three to six hours.

Hospitals such as Flushing Hospital Medical Center, Jamaica Hospital and Elmhurst Hospital are three of the largest in Queens, especially after St. Johns Hospital closed in 2009. The vacant building is now being turned into a residential building for the surrounding community.

The total emergency room wait time for Elmhurst Hospital is on average about five hours and 57 minutes, Jamaica Hospital averages to about four hours and 48 minutes and Flushing Hospital averages to about three hours and 10 minutes, according to hospitalstats.org. These times, of course, depend upon the severity of your condition and any ambulance that was sent out during that time.

The total average wait time in an emergency room before being seen by a doctor in New York State as a whole was 27 minutes, time on average for a patient spending time in the emergency room before being sent home was two hours and 44 minutes and the average wait time for a patient to be taken to their room was two and a half hours, according to propublica.org.

Our ERs stink

From CBS New York:

When it comes to emergency rooms, New York tied for 13th place in a state-by-state ranking Thursday.

As 1010 WINS’ Carol D’Auria reported, the average waiting time to be seen and treated in an emergency room in any part of the state is more than six hours.

The overall grade for New York is a C, D’Auria reported.

Dr. Robert Glatter, spokesman for the American College of Emergency Physicians said that the Affordable Care Act will likely negatively impact emergency rooms.