Results tagged “hospitals”

Low five? The Press Ganey Emergency Department Pulse Report 2009 rated NYC last among the nation's 10 largest metropolitan areas for satisfaction in emergency-department care, and New York State was 46th in overall emergency room waiting time. South Dakota came in at #1 with an average waiting time of 172 minutes, while New York narrowly beat out New Mexico with an average of 288 minutes—nearly 5 hours. (Utah came in dead last with a 408 minute wait time.) Dr. Peter Viccellio of Stony Brook University Medical Center tells Crain's "Sometimes, we can’t even spare someone to go into the waiting area and talk to patients and tell them what’s going on." He also admits to having to relocate patients to beds in hospital corridors to make room for incoming patients. Last summer a shocking video showed a woman being ignored after she died in an ER waiting room. The silver lining for NYC? This report emphasizes patient satisfaction with wait time, not with the care they eventually receive, so let's just assume we're #1 when patients eventually see a doctor—as they say, the best health comes to those who wait.

If swine flu makes a comeback this fall, city officials want to be prepared. They've been conducting a postmortem review of the spring's swine flu outbreak as they come up with plans for a possible "second wave," plans which the NY Times reports are focusing on preventing city ERs from being swamped. City Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley says the spring outbreak caught hospitals off-guard: "The thought that there would be large numbers of people in emergency rooms hadn’t been well thought through, so that’s one thing we need to address." So, in order to stop everyone with a stuffy nose from heading to the nearest ER, officials are considering a daily "public messaging system" that would give updates on vital swine flu information, not unlike the way winning lottery numbers are announced. Other swine flu countermeasures—like closing schools or even mandating staggered work hours—are also being readied in the event the virus comes back with a vengeance. At this point, Dr. Farley says it's basically a waiting game: "If you look at the history of new strains of influenza...almost all of them have had a second wave. It doesn’t necessarily occur within the next six months; it might occur a couple of years later. But almost all returned."