Why do Emergency Rooms Always Have a Long Waiting Time?

Why do Emergency Rooms Always Have a Long Waiting Time?

Providers of medical transcription service for ER doctors know how tense it is to work in the ER. Here are some reasons for long wait times in ER rooms.

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Providers of medical transcription service for emergency room doctors know how stressful it is to work in this environment. Very often, the critical notes taken down in the emergency room are illegible or scribbled and this makes transcription very challenging. Patients visiting the ER come without prior appointment and often have to endure long wait times. It is rather complex to evaluate, treat and admit the large, variable ER patient population to hospital. This in turn results in the ER patients having to spend some of their time waiting to receive care.

Long Waiting Period in Emergency Rooms -- Reasons Emergency departments are very busy places in all countries. Every year millions of patients visit emergency rooms and many of them get admitted in the hospital. Many researches and studies have been conducted to identify the factors that contribute to the long wait times. Among the prominent reasons are the following.

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Emergency department becomes overwhelmed by the sheer number of patients arriving for the care.

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Another reason is hospital overcrowding because people who are waiting to be admitted to hospital occupy stretchers that would otherwise be available to new patients.

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Time taken to assess the patient’s condition once they have been seen by the physician in the emergency department.

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Other factors are the need for blood tests, x-rays, consultation and other studies.

An Example from Canada A recent study by Dr. Malcolm Doupe at the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy in Canada provides a clear picture of various factors that affect Winnipeg’s emergency department wait times, which could be considered a standard example. The study team used relatively new Emergency Department Information System (EDIS) to track patients as they moved through emergency room from initial consultation to assessment to treatment to hospital admission or discharge.

The study found that the Winnipeg emergency departments functioned moderately well in most cases irrespective of the fact that during daytime hours they are at more than 100% capacity. In all types of emergency departments, half of the patients had a visit time of 5.1 hours or less and half stayed longer than 5.1 hours. The average national wait time was 4.4 hours for emergency departments which shows that there is still room for improvement. Corroborating the findings from previous studies, this study found that:

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Wait times were very short at an average of 6 minutes for those who needed care immediately.

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For patients with less urgent conditions, the wait times varied on the basis of how many higher urgency patients were receiving care, and how many other lower urgency patients were waiting.

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The most important finding of the study was the importance of the diagnostic testing process in determining wait times. o

When tests and scans are ordered by the doctor, wait times for other patients increased considerably.

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Winnipeg’s emergency departments had waiting periods where up to 45% of treatment areas were occupied by patients waiting for tests and x-rays.

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At such busy times, wait times for patients with moderate to less urgent conditions could range from 15 minutes to as much as 5 hours.

New Approaches Vital to Improve Emergency Department Wait Times New strategies to improve wait times in emergency departments require collaboration and new approaches among hospitals and healthcare professionals. ER processes need to be streamlined so that the time taken to get the tests done can be reduced.

Documentation can be streamlined and kept updated with the support of reliable emergency room medical transcription service providers. Another important suggestion is that authorities must find out whether community-based providers are sending patients to the emergency departments to access blood tests that could be easily done in doctors’ offices.

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