Emergency Room wait times in Southern California

In Southern California -- where the posting of wait times has yet to be adopted -- wait times are even longer than they are nationally.

An unpublished survey of Los Angeles County hospitals by the Hospital Assn. of Southern California found that wait times for non-emergency patients averages seven hours. At county facilities, the wait time is 12 hours, said association spokesman Jim Lott, noting that those statistics aren’t exactly something most hospitals want to brag about.

One area hospital, San Gabriel Valley Medical Center, launched a billboard campaign last year promising no more than 30-minute waits. Posting actual wait times is a “novel approach,” hospital spokeswoman Eileen Diamond said, but they have no plans to follow suit. Instead, the medical center has adopted a “fast track” system to quickly triage patients and added a physician’s assistant to the emergency room staff to help handle non-critical patients.

In Southern California hospitals, with a large population base and the onset of swine flu, Diamond said, “it’s a struggle right now with wait times just because of the sheer volume of patients coming through the door.”

-- Kimi Yoshino