Is keeping patients waiting in the ER a good business move?

Wall Street Journal (subscription required), July 28, 2008

In this piece from the Wall Street Journal health blog, the author asks whether long emergency room waits are good for a hospital's bottom line. The author notes that patients who show up at the emergency room are less likely than patients admitted to the hospital by a staff physician to need lucrative, procedure-driven care. Because a hospital only has so many inpatient beds, it may make economic sense to fill the beds up with the lucrative, well-insured patients admitted by staff physicians, he notes.