Before Ebola failure, Dallas hospital saw long emergency waits

Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital — under fire for releasing a Liberian man who later turned out to have the Ebola virus — has lagged behind its peers on emergency room care and lost some federal funds the past three years because it had high discharge rates of patients who later had to return for treatment. The hospital scored significantly worse than the state and national averages in five of six emergency care indicators, with emergency room wait times twice as long as the averages, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The hospital also was the most penalized in Dallas under a three-year program designed to reduce the number of patients readmitted for care, according to the data.