There’s a lengthy wait at Orlando-area emergency rooms, and it could get worse

In 2007, Florida Hospital rolled out a bold marketing campaign for two of its campuses: Emergency-room patients would be seen by a doctor within one hour of arrival. A year later, neither ER has come close to achieving that one-hour maximum wait for all patients. A major goal of the new Cover Florida health-plan initiative is to reduce ER crowding by providing affordable insurance to the state's 3.8 million uninsured. But ER crowding and wait times are unlikely to improve soon, experts say. That's especially true in Central Florida, where the economy and the population continue to expand at faster-than-average rates.