Mentally ill face extra-long ER waits

Psychiatric patients who need hospitalization wait for hours in emergency departments for admission because hospitals are dropping mental health units and beds are scarce, according to a survey by the American College of Emergency Physicians. Nearly 80% of hospitals said mentally ill patients sometimes wait four hours or more to be admitted, and about 10% said patients wait more than a day on average. Average admission times for non-psychiatric patients were shorter, and 84% of the medical directors said ER wait times for all patients would drop if their hospitals had better psychiatric services.