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

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.