Some psych patients wait days in hospital ERs

Emergency rooms, they say, have become all-purpose dumping grounds for the mentally ill, with patients routinely marooned a day or more while health care workers try to find someone to care for them. A survey of hundreds of U.S. hospitals released last month by the American College of Emergency Physicians found that 79 percent reported that they routinely "boarded" psychiatric patients in their waiting rooms for at least some period of time because of the unavailability of immediate services. One-third reported that those stays averaged at least eight hours, and 6 percent said they had average waits of more than 24 hours for the next step in a patient's care.

ERs fail as the nation's safety net

The long waits that government inspectors say endanger emergency room patients at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center can also be found in backlogged hospitals across the country, according to emergency care experts who have been trying for years to draw attention to the nation's overloaded safety net."Overcrowding in our emergency departments is a national crisis," said Dr. Linda Lawrence, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, an advocacy group based in Washington D.C. "We no longer have the capacity to serve as the safety net for society."The group surveyed 1,000 emergency care physicians in September and found that one in five knew of a patient who had died because of having to wait too long for care, Lawrence said.