ER Wait Times Still on the Increase

In this blog at the Wall Street Journal Health Blog, they tackle the issue of wait times in the ER. The average wait time in the ER has increased five minutes from 2006 to 2007 by five minutes, making the national average for waiting in the ER four hours and five minutes. One hospital in South Dakota, Avera McKennan is making it an important goal to shave the time that patients must wait in the ER. To do this, they’ve started video taping common ER cases and analyzing the video feed to make changes. The five things they’ve changed are:

1) Triage – Condensed the questions asked to the patient, made the route traveled throughout the ER more direct, and nurses caring for the patients assign the patient to the next nurse.

2) Next Step – The nurse and the doctor see the patient at the same time. If the nurse is not ready, the doctor can go ahead with the check up.

3) Universal rooms – The supplies typically needed to care for 85% of all patients are kept at the bedside. Others supplies are kept on a rolling cart.

4) Paper Work – This begins at the bedside only after the patient has begun to receive treatment.

5) Who goes where: Departments view their daily averages, and can therefore predict how many people might come in daily. The departments prepare for this average number.

These changes have lead to a 20 minute decrease in wait time since 2005.