On average, patients spent more time waiting for a doctor in hospital emergency rooms in 2004 than they did seven years earlier. That comes from new numbers by the National Center for Health Statistics. Seems the increasing wait times partly reflect a simple up tick in the number of actual visits due to an 11% increase in the U.S. population in the last ten years. But the center also says people are just seeking care more often, too. Because of this rising patient volume, the amount of time one waited before seeing a physician in an ER increased nearly 10 minutes—from 38 minutes in 1997 to 47 minutes in 2004. The good news is that once you actually can see the doc, there has been no change in the average time a patient spends face-to-face with a physician…
