Waiting in the ER - at what point does waiting become unacceptable?

So long as your initial triage and condition has not changed, is monitored, and you are being considered for service ....you will be seen when medically relevant based on need and relative to other patients that present with more serious conditions.

Consider yourself lucky if you are waiting. Its the patient's who are being hurried back that are having an emergency. An emergency is something that is a threat to life, limb, or eye sight. It is not a sore throat, back pain, migraine, or an STD. The reason waits are so long is that ERs are overused and abused by people without true emergencies and who do not utilize primary care. Do not begrudge the medical providers - you are triaged and seen by order of importance and severity. If the sore throat has been waiting for 8 hours, they will not be seen before the chest pain patient simply because they got there sooner. If you have a non emergent issue, an urgent care or primary care is more appropriate and will free up the ER to do what they are there for - EMERGENCIES.

when the agony of the wait overcomes the ailment that brought you to the ER.

The only time I go to the ER is if I'm in pain above my typical tolerance level. The last time was years ago for kidney stone. That was a good 6 hours of agony. Did I want to get seen ASAP? Of course. However, as a former Corpsman, I know how triage works and I'm a bit more patient, even when I'm in pain.

The ER is for emergencies, think heart, brain, lungs or prevent loss of life , limb, or eyesight. If you are there for any other reason (sniffles, my knee hurts, etc), you will wait, wait for those who are there, triaged by urgency, to be seen first. If a same day sick call, urgent care type clinic available, use that.

The challenge here is process. A huge numbers of ER visits could have been appropriately dispositioned by the Primary Care team IF they can get access (same-day) appointments. While there are certainly some cases that MUST be managed by the ER, there are huge volumes of low acuity (not very sick peeps) that sit in ER beds resulting in low throughput (longer wait times). At our ED, the busiest in the state, about 30% of patients get admitted to the hospital (due to risk aversion or significant illness/injury). Those beds stay filled until a hospitalist/specialist come to admit them. This has given rise to the "minute clinic" or "urgent care" business where rapid assessments and quick dispositions are business models and drive profits (for those with cash and/or great insurance). The ER sees you regardless of severity of illness and ability to pay....they come in droves, and camp out. George, I feel your pain....and mine is greater.

To your point, average times are tough to compute because boarders skew the data. The facts are these. Wait times are going up. Obamacare has increased access to care, but often inappropriate access via emergency rooms rather than primary care.

Peeps get triaged by priority, not by wait time. That said, the scariest patient and sometimes the sickest, is the dude rotting in the waiting room... It is a national problem.

Once it starts healing on its own, I have to throw in the towel.

When you die before anyone sees you.

This is a good question for some of our loyal medical & nursing staff. Maybe Col Dona Marie Iversen and Col Rebecca Lorraine as well as others of our medical members can offer insights on endless waits in the emergency room, whether VA or local hospital.

Unfortunately, ER's do not work on the "First come, First served" method. You will be seen based on the severity of your condition. Depending on patient density, that may be 10 minutes, it may be 10 hours. Be glad you are being made to wait. It means you are not in immediate danger of dying right then.

Incidentally, just because you arrive by ambulance does not mean you will be seen faster either. I've put dozens of patients in the triage waiting room to wait. The look on their face is priceless!