Emergency Room "WAIT" Time

[Sourdough]

Some where I viewed a site that showed "Live/Current" wait time at ER in many cities.

 

[Caribou]

Next time in Los Anchorage go past Alaska Regional Hospital, they have a sign in front telling you what the ER wait time is.

 

[Haertig]

I don't know how they could do this wait time prediction accurately, since ER's are not "first come, first served".

If you show up at the ER for a stupid reason, your wait time will be between long, very long, and ridiculously long. On the other hand, if you show up in the ER with a true emergency (what they were designed for), your wait time will approach zero. If you showed up for a stupid reason and managed to get in a room anyway (because they weren't busy when you showed up), and someone subsequently shows up with a true emergency, then you'll be sitting in your room waiting all over again.

 

[Caribou]

I wandered through the ER waiting room. My FD uniform was enough excuse for one of the patients to complain about the wait time.
Me: "You're lucky."
Patient: "LUCKY? How do your figure that?"
Me: "I just delivered a guy that can't wait." That pretty much ended the conversation.

 

[backlash]

My record wait time was 8 hours and I never did get to see anyone.
I tore u a knee and it was swelled up and hurt really bad. All I wanted was something for the pain and a pair of crutches. Unfortunately there was no urgent care any where close.

 

[Neb]

My record wait time was 8 hours and I never did get to see anyone.

My record was my last visit after I had too much BP medication and my BP was extremely low. Zero time in the waiting room.

Ben

 

[Amish Heart]

My Sept ER visit was a zero wait time. I had chest pain and trouble breathing. BUT there was no one in the waiting room, either. Now urgent care on a Monday, you may as well bring a novel to read. Like Atlas Shrugged.

 

[Spikedriver]

When they took me into the ER at Yuma last winter, I went into a room right now because they thought it might be cardiac related. They determined fairly quickly it was not immediately life threatening and things slowed down quite a bit. I've been fortunate in life, the very few times I've needed to be in the ER, things were serious enough that there was no wait. The worst was when I had a norovirus, because all they could do was give me IVs and monitor me. There was a huge flurry of activity around me for a half hour, then I just sat in the ER for about 4 more hours letting the IVs rehydrate me...

 

[Terri9630]

The one time I took my oldest to the ER she had a temp of 108 we sat there for 2 hrs. They knew about the fever.

 

[Alaskajohn]

Sourdough, let me know what you need to know specifically in a PM.

 

[Haertig]

The one time I took my oldest to the ER she had a temp of 108 we sat there for 2 hrs. They knew about the fever.

They must have been incompetent, or knew she had a fever but not the magnitude of it. Somewhere between 105 and 106 is considered a medical emergency. 108 would kill about half the people that got that high.

 

[Sourdough]

There is a site, OR THERE WAS A SITE on the internet for this. Sadly, I suck at finding things on the internet.

 

[Peanut]

No two days in a ER are the same. But there is a pattern to ER patient loads at every hospital I done work at (100's). However, as a general guideline...

In my experience ER's are very busy on Friday but peaks on Saturday. Sunday night is more like a Friday but can be less. Monday is a iffy day, can be fairly busy or slow. Tuesday and Wednesday nights are the slowest. Patient load begins to pick up a little on Thursday.

If you have to take a sick kid to the ER on Friday or Saturday, pack a cooler! The odds are you're going to be there a while. If you've been sick for 3 days at work go to the ER that night. Don't put it off til Friday. Fri/Sat all the drunks, druggies, bad drivers come out. Or during flu season conscientious employees or folks who can't miss a paycheck show up... who've looked like the walking dead all week at work.

Again just what I've noticed over the years. But it is an ER, anything might happen to turn a slow night upside down.

And every hospital is a little different, weather is a factor, flu season, holidays, maybe a college with sports in town. If you know what to expect it's not quite so frustrating.

 

[Haertig]

If you've been sick for 3 days at work go to the ER that night. Don't put it off til Friday.

I would say don't go to the ER in that case. Go to see your regular doctor the next morning. Hint: If you have been sick for 3 days, still going to work through that sickness, and are considering "putting it off until Friday" - you do not belong in the ER. You would be abusing the system if you showed up there. The ER is not a substitute for a regular doctors office visit.

 

[Peanut]

In a perfect world yes... but pharma and their tool obummer, gutted the healthcare system, and now covid? The working poor have no insurance these days, er is the only option for millions.

 

[Haertig]

The working poor have no insurance these days, er is the only option for millions.

If they can go into the ER and skip out on paying their bill, why can't they go into the doctors office and skip out on paying their bill? And Medicaid is free insurance for people who can't afford insurance. As a matter of fact, when you go into the insurance exchanges the first thing that is done is checking to see if you qualify for Medicaid. If you do, full stop, you get that. For free. You can't to go on to look at other plans that would cost you money. So even if you want to contribute to paying your insurance costs, you aren't allowed to. This is the way it was several years ago, the exchange rules may have changed since them.

 

[Alaskajohn]

https://alaskaregional.com/about/legal/er-wait-times.dot
https://www.matsuregional.com/er-wait-time
https://erwatcher.com/hospitalcards/92

 

[phideaux]

Last time I went to ER was for a tachycardia event. They took 10 minutes to sign me in , wanted to know my life history. Then they took 10 minutes to get a gerney to wheel me to a room , and they knew I was in serious stress BP falling like a rock.
After another 10 minutes the doctor came in (he treated me fo this before), he told the 2 nurses to get some things in a hurry. We don't have much time.
They shocked me and got me stable and he told me , another 5 minutes would have been too late.
I can't believe they can't wait till your stable to get your life history.
I hate ERs.
But they saved my life at least 8 times over the years.

Jim

 

[Sourdough]

https://alaskaregional.com/about/legal/er-wait-times.dot
https://www.matsuregional.com/er-wait-time
https://erwatcher.com/hospitalcards/92

THANKS..........That is a good tool.

 

[Alaskajohn]

THANKS..........That is a good tool.

I didn’t see ER wait times for Providence Seward or Central Peninsula, but I can find historical data on wait times for them if you want.

The ER wait time that you see in my link is a measurement of “door to doctor“ time, but true wait time until treatment is a different metric. The ED wait time in the link is simply a measurement of how long it takes from the time you arrive until the clinician makes a triage determination on if you are in immediate life or death situation. If you are, then they move the world to fix things as fast as possible.

If you just have a sore throat, broken wrist, or some other non life threatening condition then you are put in the cue and you might not get tested or treated for sometimes hours based on what else is coming through the door. The more sophisticated hospitals know how the measurement works and how the unsophisticated public doesn’t understand what metrics are more important. So these hospitals go all out to make sure their ER wait time dashboards stay less than 10-15 minutes. They will have alarms if the metric is above say 10 minutes so they can get after it.

You can also look at the dashboard and see the ER wait time at 8 minutes and think you’ll see a doctor quick only to get there after a bad car crash with 3-4 trauma patients at the edge of their lives arriving when you do. Unless you are at a world class trauma center with abundant resources, you will have a long day in the ED. Alaska doesn’t have true trauma centers.

 

[Terri9630]

They must have been incompetent, or knew she had a fever but not the magnitude of it. Somewhere between 105 and 106 is considered a medical emergency. 108 would kill about half the people that got that high.

My vote is incompetent. I called our Doc and she told me to drive to the next city and called the hospital so they were expecting us. They already had an ice bath ready when we got there. I'm sure she also called the local hospital director because we got a letter asking about the issue.

 

[Supervisor42]

I don't know how they could do this wait time prediction accurately, since ER's are not "first come, first served".

If you show up at the ER for a stupid reason, your wait time will be between long, very long, and ridiculously long. On the other hand, if you show up in the ER with a true emergency (what they were designed for), your wait time will approach zero. If you showed up for a stupid reason and managed to get in a room anyway (because they weren't busy when you showed up), and someone subsequently shows up with a true emergency, then you'll be sitting in your room waiting all over again.

I wasn't going to comment on this but there is much more to it than people think about.
There were places in north Alabama where the ER was constantly full of people.
All of them Hispanic 'non-citizens' with no insurance, no money, and did not have medicaid.
The vast majority were there because one of their kids had a cold and the local doctors didn't do "freebies".
The ER's can't say 'no', but they can say 'wait'.

The good news is, if you are bleeding on the ER floor, you get taken to a room QUICK!

 

[DrJenner]

Most people can afford the $80-$100 for a doc visit, or even see a PA or nurse practitioner, but they choose not to. The problem with skipping out on a clinic bill is that the clinic won't see you until you pay your bill, and then you would need to use the ER. The hospital will write it off. Many clinics won't see the uninsured without a cash payment up front, but do discount services for uninsured. This results in overcrowding of ERs for unnecessary visits.
Someone had posted this on facebook, and I can't take credit for it, but as someone who has worked in the ER, I can absolutely appreciate this:

"THIS is why you wait in the emergency room when you go without an emergency. THIS is why you had to wait for your water to be refilled. THIS is why you had to wait for your discharge papers, meds, blanket, any other material object. THIS is the room you DON'T want to be in, and the room you need to be praying for, and hard. THIS is what it takes to save a life, which is what you come to us for. You are sick. You are tired. You are uncomfortable. We know. Stop bashing your healthcare providers for not "being on time with meds," and "taking too long for a water refill." Because we are trained to drop all of those things in a blink of an eye and save THIS person's life. You wait because you can. We rush to them, because their chance of survival decreases every second we are not at their side."

 

[Supervisor42]

Most people can afford the $80-$100 for a doc visit, or even see a PA or nurse practitioner, but they choose not to. The problem with skipping out on a clinic bill is that the clinic won't see you until you pay your bill, and then you would need to use the ER. The hospital will write it off. Many clinics won't see the uninsured without a cash payment up front, but do discount services for uninsured. This results in overcrowding of ERs for unnecessary visits.
Someone had posted this on facebook, and I can't take credit for it, but as someone who has worked in the ER, I can absolutely appreciate this:

"THIS is why you wait in the emergency room when you go without an emergency. THIS is why you had to wait for your water to be refilled. THIS is why you had to wait for your discharge papers, meds, blanket, any other material object. THIS is the room you DON'T want to be in, and the room you need to be praying for, and hard. THIS is what it takes to save a life, which is what you come to us for. You are sick. You are tired. You are uncomfortable. We know. Stop bashing your healthcare providers for not "being on time with meds," and "taking too long for a water refill." Because we are trained to drop all of those things in a blink of an eye and save THIS person's life. You wait because you can. We rush to them, because their chance of survival decreases every second we are not at their side."

View attachment 77371

That looks exactly like the room I was in when my brachial artery was cut completely in two.
Yeah, I left a heck of a mess for somebody to clean up.
I had about 10 minutes left before they would be zipping me into a body-bag, but I kept complaining.
That was when I learned that yes, they can 'shotgun' a transfusion or 3, into you really quick.
They put a blood-pressure cuff on the bag of blood and pumped the bulb like crazy.
In less than a minute the bag was empty and they were hooking up another one.
The Dr told me the next day that I had lost 4 units of blood and they gave me 3 since I could make the last one up by myself.

I would like to apologize to any mom that had to wait, because after all, her kid had had the sniffles for 2 whole days!

 

[Haertig]

We used to use BP cuffs on IV bags for massive trauma victims in the ambulance all the time. But you can only go so far with that in an ambulance. Ambulances don't carry blood (or at least they didn't when I was a paramedic), so our infusions were Ringer's Lactate or Normal Saline. Basically water with electrolytes - no oxygen carrying capabilities. So we could increase the volume of fluid in your circulatory system, and that is helpful when you're losing blood, but in the end you're not going to live on arteries full of water. We'd cut you off before we did a complete "flush and fill".

 

[Peanut]

Everyone forgets the impact the radiology dept. play in ER delays. If the catscan or another major piece of equipment goes down the ER is the first place this is felt. I can't count the number of times I've gotten a service call for a CT. I arrive and the hallway is full of folks and their families waiting for the CT to work again. And somehow they always knew I was the guy they were waiting for. I round a corner and everyone goes silent, and all the eyes are on me. Talk about working under pressure! I never quite got used to the eyes.

 

[Caribou]

Everyone forgets the impact the radiology dept. play in ER delays. If the catscan or another major piece of equipment goes down the ER is the first place this is felt. I can't count the number of times I've gotten a service call for a CT. I arrive and the hallway is full of folks and their families waiting for the CT to work again. And somehow they always knew I was the guy they were waiting for. I round a corner and everyone goes silent, and all the eyes are on me. Talk about working under pressure! I never quite got used to the eyes.

It is a medical system and all parts need to work. The doctors get most of the credit, followed by nurses, but from the 911 operator to the housekeeping staff that cleans up the mess, everyone is an important part. Without maintenance and repair the doctors loose valuable tools. Without lab techs another whole set of diagnostics would disappear. Without housekeeping infections would be far worse than they already are.

In the South Pacific I ran across a couple that discussed what a hospital visit entailed. If you wanted clean sheets on your bed, you brought them. If you wanted a bath, in a clean tub, you needed to clean it. It was the same tub they used to debride burn victims in.

 

[Neb]

Everyone forgets the impact the radiology dept. play in ER delays. If the catscan or another major piece of equipment goes down the ER is the first place this is felt. I can't count the number of times I've gotten a service call for a CT. I arrive and the hallway is full of folks and their families waiting for the CT to work again. And somehow they always knew I was the guy they were waiting for. I round a corner and everyone goes silent, and all the eyes are on me. Talk about working under pressure! I never quite got used to the eyes.

I have thrived in those circles of 3 piece suits.

Thank God I survived and thrived.

Ben

 

[Peanut]

The medical world is far different than when I worked in it. But one thing holds true...

Few summers ago my doc sent me to an ER at a regional hosp, on a Saturday, 4pm, it was packed. 1.5hrs and I get seen, not too bad in that zoo. Even the waiting rm was standing rm only.

I get a complete check by a nurse, then an NP, then a doc. He ordered an ultrasound. Problem, one of their 2 ultrasounds had stopped working an hour earlier. I didn't even get to radiology, just a gurney in an already crowded hallway.

After a couple hours they started sending non-critical home, the ones that could get an ultrasound in the new wing of the hospital beginning at 4am. I couldn't wait to leave and was pretty sure what happened, I've been that guy.

At some point the medical equipment service guy and had to say "Sorry, it'll be tomorrow before I can get the part it needs". That was never fun to do. On the other hand... I've had overworked er docs that were relieved they stayed closed to trauma.

My point is that even today the radiology dept can back up an ER rather quickly. It might be a lab or some other dept.

Most patients would never know the real reason either, especially if its a busy ER. In my case most would have complained about the ER. But the truth was, the staff were great. It was wall to wall madness but they worked like a well oiled machine. Until another dept had an issue.