New Yorkers spent an average of five hours getting through the city’s emergency rooms last year—18 minutes longer than in 2008, according to data released by health care consulting group Press Ganey.

Indeed, the Empire State has the fourth worst average ER waiting time in the nation, behind only Utah, Kansas and Arizona, according to the report. Nationally, the average hospital waiting time is just over four hours, up four minutes from last year.

Some hospitals are considering rearranging their patients’ admissions to try to reduce their emergency rooms’ waiting time.

“The emergency department is as the mercy of inpatients,” said Christy Dempsey, senior vice president of clinical operations for PatientFlow, which is part of Press Ganey. Because there are a large number of inpatients with procedures scheduled earlier in the week, fewer beds are open for emergency room patients during those days. Many patients have elective procedures done earlier in the week because it allows them quicker access to physical therapy and occupational therapy.

“By adding these services, like physical therapy and occupational therapy, on the weekend, it will stretch these operations out over the rest of the week,” said Sandra Schneider, a physician at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, N.Y., and president-elect for the American College of Emergency Physicians.

Another low-cost solution to this problem, developed at Stony Brook University Medical Center, is to move patients who would be waiting in the hallways of the emergency rooms into the hallways of the floors on which they will eventually be treated. This process can shorten emergency room waits up to several hours, said Dr. Schneider.

“Rather than clogging up the emergency department, we move patients to beds faster and improve flow through the emergency department,” she added.

Some 29 states saw an increase in wait times, including Utah, which saw average wait time increase by an hour and a half. This may be a result of changes in access to insurance and low numbers of staffed inpatient beds and registered nurses, according to the American College of Emergency Physicians.

(Source: Crains NY)