BMC Emergency Room Wait Times Comparable to Other Boston Hospitals

Which Boston emergency room is the most efficient? It depends on what you mean, according to data released by the Center for Medicare & Medicid Services. At the South End’s Boston Medical Center, the average time patients spent in the emergency department before they were seen by a healthcare professional was 18 minutes, which is much quicker than the state and national averages of 40 and 30 minutes, but but longer than the wait at Mass. General, which is 10 minutes.   Of those patients, the average time patients spent in the BMC emergency department before being sent home was 181 minutes, compared to the state average of 152 minutes and the national average of 140 minutes.  Finally, the average time patients spent in the BMC emergency department, before they were admitted to the hospital as an inpatient was 280 minutes, compared to the state average of 311 minutes and the national average of 277 minutes.  CHART: See how Boston Medical Center compares to other city emergency rooms Behind the NumbersKey measures of ER efficiency have been posted from hospitals taking part across the country, according to a report by Cheryl Clark, senior quality editor for HealthLeaders Media. “With precious little fanfare, Uncle Sam last month rolled out a big, fat database with seven measures comparing a service that many people—healthcare providers and patients alike—consider the most critical any hospital can provide,” wrote Clark. Data collected in 2011 and early 2012 also tracked how long it took for an ER patient to be seen by a healthcare professional and how long the wait was to get a bed if they needed admission. Other data showed how long patients spent in the ER before being sent home and whether they received a brain scan if they might have suffered a stroke. Clark interviewed Dr. Jesse Pines, an emergency room doctor and researcher who directs the center for healthcare quality at George Washington University. “The theory is that when hospitals report this information, it makes them focus on it, and improve throughout their [Emergency Department],” Pines was quoted as saying. “But it’s very hard to do. Certain performance measures are easier to fix—like simple process measures like giving patients an aspirin—than improving ED throughput, which involves development of interdisciplinary teams.” Pines told Clark the public focus good pushes hospital administrators to focus on the emergency room as well as other metrics. In a column, Clark said she thought the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services would “make a bigger fuss about such a major release.” She added: Certainly with so much concern about ED overcrowding, and the number of […]

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