“It’s not usually like this,” said Roxbury resident Senchona Loving as she sat in the Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center. “It’s usually 30 minutes . . . I usually come here because it’s bigger and the wait is shorter.”
Loving,who underwent a kidney transplant four years ago, said she had been waiting for more than three hours in the center to see if her flu-like symptoms were developing into something more serious.
According to a recently released Harvard Medical School study wait-times in cities increased 11.6 percent faster than in non-urban settings — a fact local emergency room patients know all-too-well.
The study reported the median waiting time for heart attack patients has jumped 150 percent in American emergency rooms and patients in urgent condition have been waiting 40 percent longer since 2001.
The study — the first of its kind — compared emergency room wait times from 1997 and 2004. Researchers found emergency room wait times have generally increased by 36 percent and minority patients often have to wait longer than white patients.
Cambridge Health Alliance researcher and co-author of the study Dr. Andrew Wilper said the study did not identify the cause of increased wait times and was only intended to measure length of time between patients’ arrival in waiting rooms and when they received care.
“But there are obvious reasons for this increase in wait time, such as general overcrowding, and lack of available intensive care units,” Wilper said.
Wilper said patients who do not require immediate care contribute to the overcrowding of emergency departments. Seeking non-emergency treatment can slow down the process for patients in need of immediate care, including heart-attack sufferers, he said.
Wilper said though the number of emergency room visits has increased, the number of emergency room departments has declined. He said this was probably because emergency rooms are less profitable to hospitals than surgeries.
Boston University University Professors Program Dean Emeritus Aram V. Chobanian said he is aware of the issue of overcrowding and attributed many delays to insurance problems common among emergency room visitors.
He said the main reason for delays was most patients’ lack of insurance, though some intensive care units, including the Boston Medical Center, have improved the process.
Chobanian acknowledged minority groups and whites may have varying wait times, but said it was because some hospitals are not as well-equipped as others, leading to longer wait times.
“But this isn’t related to race,” he said.