What Are Emergency Wait Times?

Emergency is not a first-come, first-served system.

Patients suffering from life threatening to minor conditions can access emergency care at these locations; however critical patients are attended to first, whether they arrive on their own or with EMS.

Emergency department wait times are an estimate of how long it will take from the time a patient is assessed by a triage nurse upon arrival at Emergency until they are seen by a physician.

How do we calculate emergency department wait times?

Our wait times compare the demand for emergency department services to our capacity to meet that demand. Our wait times are measured from when a patient arrives and is assessed by a triage nurse until they see a physician.

The demand for emergency services is calculated using the number of patients waiting to be seen, and how sick they are.

The capacity to meet this demand is calculated using the number of physicians and staff able to care for these patients and the number of patients that can be seen by these staff per hour, which can differ by site.

Given this information we can give an estimation on how long patients will wait to see a physician.

Because new patients arrive frequently, estimated wait times can change significantly.

Your personal experience may vary from these posted wait times based on a number of factors:

• Patients with more life-threatening situations arriving in the emergency department
• Trauma situations arriving in the emergency department
• Mass casualties, which may affect the wait times at all sites across the zone
• Available capacity to see patients
• Volume of patients waiting to be seen
• Available physician staffing resources

Who updates the wait times system?

The computer system that supports our wait times information is part of a larger web-based software program that provides real time data to our emergency departments.  This automated system is what allows us to provide this information externally. It does not require additional staffing support to update or provide this data to the public.