Racial disparities in emergency department length of stay point to added risks for minority patients
Thursday, March 5, 2009 - 11:21
in Health & Medicine
Sick or injured African-American patients wait about an hour longer than patients of other races before being transferred to an inpatient hospital bed following emergency room visits, according to a new national study published in the journal Academic Emergency Medicine. The authors say the findings underscore the urgency to find equitable, cost-effective solutions to provide better care in the nation's emergency departments, which are already strained by unprecedented crowding and more visits from the nation's uninsured population, which is expected to balloon toward 55 million people in the next decade.