Derrick Harding
HCA 320 Atkins
4/16/14
Patient Emergency Department Wait Times

For this research assignment I have decided to focus on emergency department wait times that patients commonly experience. The two peer reviewed articles that I have chosen both address the topic of wait times and each propose and suggest different solutions/methods to this problem. The first article titled, Managing Patient Waits in Hospital Emergency Department addresses why the wait is important to manage, how ER managers might manage the reality of patient waits, and how they might manage patient perception of the wait. It is pretty much a globally known fact that waiting is not favored by any individual. If given much of an option or better alternative many people would actually choose not to wait and instead take an alternative route. However in healthcare an alternative route is not always available or let alone the most realistic approach. Instead of seeking alternatives we sometimes have to make the best of what we have and that is exactly what is taking place in this article. “Managing the lines and how long customers have to wait in them is a major concern of any health care service organization that wishes to improve its customer satisfaction and capacity utilization levels” (Fottler & Ford, 2002). As described in the article health care organization need to manage and deal with the issues of wait times as their business and operation may be affected by it. It can definitely be challenging to manage emergency department waits and there is no direct answer or solution to the problem. However it is fine to produce different methods to how to approach the emergency wait issues. There are many different ways of attacking emergency department waits but first I will discuss some taken by a hospital in my first research article. This article presents some strategies for managing the reality and the perception of customer’s wait for service using some data from a real hospital emergency department for illustrative purposes (Fottler & Ford, 2002). First, the secret to managing the customer’s wait effectively is