While overall satisfaction numbers aren’t too bad, the average time spent on a visit to the emergency room is a whopping fours and three minutes.
While hospitals are working to cut these times, maybe the problem is with patients. I, like most people, have visited emergency rooms when it wasn’t an emergency. Maybe I had some pain, maybe I had a bad flu. But it’s often so tough to get an appointment with your doctor, you go to the emergency room.
Of course, folks who are in immediate need of help get through the ER a heck of a lot quicker. But it almost seems like the services should be somehow separated: General care and true emergencies. My concern is that the non-emergent patients may be taxing the system for those who need help in a hurry.
