Now We Wait

 

  A few summers ago, I got really sick while visiting family in China. It wasn't until I woke up running a 103 F fever one morning that I went to a hospital there. Even in a state of fever-induced delirium, I remember being worried about the wait time, or not making an appointment-- things I'm used to with US hospitals-- or the potentially complicated paperwork involved with being a visitor from out of the country. I thought it might've been better to keep taking ibuprofen and just tough it out. 

Surprisingly, I was seen by a doctor not long after arriving at the hospital. They conducted a quick blood test to determine if I had an infection, and I was able to pick up my medications and leave the hospital within an hour. The entire visit was very streamlined. My relatives in China told me this was normal.

A few months ago, my friend spoke to me about her experience taking her mom to the emergency department in the US. Her mom had a systolic blood pressure above 180 mm Hg at the time and they waited over 5 hours to be seen in the ED. Hearing about her experience was a shock to me, and it stood in stark contrast to my own experience getting urgent medical care in a different country. It made me realize how countries around the world can vary greatly in their standard wait times during hospital visits, and so I really resonated with Monday's lecture when we went over this topic. 

In the US, a hospital ED patient waits more than 1.5 hours to take a room and 2.25 hours before being discharged. It's also worrisome that the number of patients who leave the ED without being seen has almost doubled in recent years. The root causes of wait times are complex and seem to be affected by many factors. 

Solutions have been proposed to tackle the wait time issue, and one that seemed interesting to me is a financial reward system. Hospital wait times would be measured and benchmarked/gauged against the national average waiting time of patients with similar conditions. Hospitals that have shorter waiting times than the average would be financially rewarded, while underperforming hospitals would potentially be penalized. I would be interested to see how this approach would play out.