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May 5th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda FRIDAY, May 4 (HealthDay News) — 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, a new study says.
Overall, patients with psychiatric emergencies wait about 42 percent
longer in the emergency department than other patients, according to the
findings published online May 1 in the Annals of Emergency
Medicine.
“These patients are waiting the longest for care, and shrinking
resources are having a disproportionate effect on these very vulnerable
people,” lead study author Dr. Anthony Weiss, of Massachusetts General
Hospital in Boston, said in a journal news release.
The researchers looked at five hospital-based ERs within the greater
Boston area.
Weiss and colleagues analyzed the records of nearly 1,100 adults
patients with psychiatric emergencies to determine how long it took
patients to see a doctor and get a psychiatric evaluation. Patients who
were sent home after being seen by medical staff spent an average of 8.6
hours in the emergency department, while patients who were eventually
admitted to a psychiatric unit within the hospital had an average
emergency department stay of 11 hours.
Patients who were transferred to an outside unit within the local
health care system stayed in the emergency department for an average of
12.9 hours, while those transferred to a facility outside the local health
care system stayed 15 hours.
The average length of emergency department stay was 10.7 hours for
patients aged 18 to 39 and 12.6 hours for patients older than 60. The
one-third of patients who tested positive for alcohol had an average stay
of 14.5 hours.
There were no differences in how long it took for patients with public
insurance such as Medicare or Medicaid or private insurance to be treated;
however, uninsured patients spent four more hours in the ER than these
other groups, according to researchers.
“Between 2000 and 2007, psychiatric visits to ERs grew by 231 percent,”
Weiss said. “This increase in volume, when combined with fewer resources
outside the ER, has led to a real crisis for this population. Long waits
for care aren’t good for anyone but they are especially harmful to
patients in psychiatric distress.”
More information
The American College of Emergency Physicians has more about emergency
department waiting times.
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