MINNEAPOLIS, January 16, 2008—Patients needing urgent care are waiting longer than they did a decade ago, according to a new study.

A Harvard Medical School research team found a quarter of MI patients waited at least 50 minutes to see an ER doctor in 2004.

Waits for all types of emergency department visits became 36 percent longer between 1997 and 2004, the study published in Health Affairs says.

Most disturbing is the finding that people who had seen a triage nurse and been designated as needing immediate attention still waited 40 percent longer -- from an average of 10 minutes in 1997 to an average 14 minutes in 2004.

MI patients waited eight minutes in 1997, but had to wait 20 minutes in 2004.

The Harvard team used U.S. Census survey and National Center for Health Statistics data for their study, which covered more than 92,000 emergency department visits.

They used other surveys to calculate that the number of emergency room visits rose from 93.4 million in 1994 to 110.2 million in 2004.

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