HealthDay (5/5, Preidt) reported, “Patients with mental health emergencies wait an average of 11.5 hours — nearly half a day — in hospital emergency departments, and those who are older, uninsured or intoxicated wait even longer,” according to a study published online in the Annals of Emergency Medicine. Investigators found that “overall, patients with psychiatric emergencies wait about 42 percent longer in the emergency department than other patients.”
MedPage Today (5/6, Bankhead) reported, “Several recent studies have shown that patients who go to emergency departments for psychiatric care have substantially longer waits compared with patients seeking other types of care.” For instance, “In a survey by the American College of Emergency Physicians, 40% of emergency department medical directors said psychiatric patients waited more than eight hours from disposition decision to discharge from the ED. In contrast, 7% of the directors said medical patients had to wait that long.”
Related Links:
— “Psychiatric Patients Often Wait Nearly 12 Hours in ER,”Robert Preidt, HealthDay, May 2, 2012.