Long wait in Dallas hospital ER may have cost ex-restaurateur his life

Mike Herrera's pain was growing as he walked into the emergency department of Dallas-based Parkland Memorial Hospital on a recent evening. But it wasn't until he collapsed in an exam room 19 hours after he was admitted that the staff seemed to spring into action, his family says. Herrera's death follows years of warnings about excessive wait times in the emergency department of the hospital, which serves the indigent and others without health insurance. A 2004 study on the hospital said wait times in Parkland's ER were so excessive that more than one in 10 patients left the hospital before seeing a doctor.