How Long is an ER Wait at Mercy Iowa City and University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics? Feds Spill the Beans

If you go to the emergency room at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics with a broken bone, how long will it take before you get pain medicine? 

The federal government says 87 minutes on average.

Do you think that is a shorter or longer wait than at Mercy Iowa City, across town?

The wait time at UIHC is 40 percent longer than at Mercy, and it's also 40 percent longer than the national average, according to a new database causing some hospital officials nationwide to cringe. You'll wait about 62 minutes on average at Mercy and on average at ERs across the nation.

Compared to hospitals across Iowa, those averages all look a little high. Iowa emergency room wait times for broken bones come in at a zippy 47 minutes on average.

Key measures of ER efficiency have been posted from hospitals taking part across the country, according to a report by Cheryl Clark, a 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,” Clark wrote Thursday.

In Iowa City, emergency room wait times at Mercy are shorter than UIHC in several categories, but not all. For example, you are more likely to see a healthcare professional at UIHC more quickly 22 minutes, compared to 26 minutes at Mercy.

Data collected in 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 patients being boarded in hospital hallways and even closets, coughing on each other and getting sicker as they wait, a three-month picture of the state of an ED’s throughput  speed should be a very big deal.

But after a few conversations with emergency care experts who know how to read between the lines of this 29,664-record database, I started to realize how raw and flawed this effort still is.

She said a “bizarre glitch” by the Georgia Hospital Association showed wait times for 170 Georgia emergency rooms as “hopelessly inflated.”

Using the national database, residents can compare the ER care at either hospital with any two other local hospitals.

First go to the Hospital Compare website. Then type in your ZIP code, city or local hospital. When a list of hospitals is displayed, put a checkmark next to two or three hospitals.

Scroll down to a yellow button labeled Compare Now, and click to display more details. Look for a tab called Timely and Effecive Care and click that.

Finally, scroll down to a section called Timely Emergency Department Care. A green button allows you to “View More Details."

Were you surprised by any of the stats displayed?  Tell us in the comments.