Emergency Department average wait time before admission, average time till sent home, and average number of violations for different hospitals types in Tennessee: Date Analysis of Medicare Data

Abstract

AbstractThe Emergency Department is a key facet of modern healthcare facilities and is responsible for bringing in a lot of patient volume. This healthcare asset is prone to a lot of shortcomings, primarily long waiting times. Though, patients primarily go to the emergency department in emergency scenarios, they still have a choice on which hospital they choose to attend. As such, it may be important for patients to be informed on the expected wait times at hospitals. Though the wait times vary each day, it may be important to know the average expected wait times, time till sent home, and number of violations by hospital type. Using the hospital data published by Medicare, the hospitals were grouped into 3 categories (Not for profit, For profit, and Academic) and data analysis was conducted and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)was used to determine if the results were statistically significant. The analysis revealed that Academic hospital emergency departments had the highest time before admission, highest time until admission, and highest number of violations. The ANOVA revealed that the difference observed was significant in both time until admission (p-value=.0867) and number of violations (p-value = .011). The results of the study suggest that patients should consider attending a for-profit hospital emergency department if waiting time is a major concern. Analysis of the number of violations (indicative of poor care quality) suggested that for-profit hospitals do not have worse care quality and patients should not be worried about compromised quality care for the shorter wait time.