Web site lets you track ER wait time

Middletown (WTNH) - Every second counts in a medical emergency, but if your injury is not that urgent you could be waiting in the emergency room for a long time. A new web site, launched Wednesday, lets you see how long you will have to wait in the ER.

Three branches of Middlesex Hospital are offering the service: the main campus in Middletown, the Shoreline Medical Center in Essex and the Marlborough Medical Center.

"It'll give people a realistic expectation for how long a wait it will be before they see a doctor. It will also enable those patients that could drive to more than one of our other sites to decide they're going to the one with the shorter waiting time, maybe a five-minute longer drive but maybe a 30-minute shorter waiting time to be seen," explained Dr. Michael Saxe, Middlesex Hospital.

News Channel 8 was given a tour of the new and improved Emergency Department at Middlesex Hospital in Middletown.

They've got emergency care covered from the helipad, where LIFE STAR can transport more serious cases, to patient stations with full charts and even x-rays online. It is state-of-the-art, everything's automated and that includes a down-to-the-minute calculation of just how long each person has been waiting.

Why the worry?

"Waiting times in the Emergency Departments in the United States is the number one complaint," said Dr. Michael Saxe of the Middlesex Hospital.

Right now, the national average is an entire hour.

"ER's, in the country are getting busier; one of the reasons is that ER's see everyone regardless of their health insurance status," said Dr. Saxe.

More patients means more waiting. The patient population at Middlesex has jumped 20-percent in the last five years. But a whopping 75-percent of those people do not have life-threatening injuries.

So this is their solution: the hospital's latest addition is a website where anyone can go and get an accurate idea of how long you'd wait. This is door-to-doctor time; when you arrive to when you actually see a doctor.

Doctors want to stress this is only for non-life threatening situations. If you have an emergency, you should still call 9-1-1 and the ambulance will take you to the nearest hospital. But a whopping 75-percent of patients who walk into the ER do NOT have life-threatening injuries.

To find out more, please visit http://middlesexertime.com/