ER Wait Times

Redirecting non-urgent visitors may reduce ED wait times.
The Wall Street Journal (5/9, Martin, Subscription Publication) spotlighted some solutions to alleviate increasingly longer emergency-department wait times. For one, urgent-care centers or retail healthcare clinics could accommodate approximately 14% to 27% of all visits that presently take at hospital emergency-departments, according to a study published in the September 2010 issue of Health Affairs. Programs that refer non-urgent ED visitors elsewhere are working as well. For example, in 2006, the Aurora Sinai Medical Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, started using a program that refers non-urgent ED patients to alternate providers. According to Aurora Sinai's ED Director Dr. Paul Coogan, the program enabled the hospital to reduce its ED visits by roughly 23% annually.