ER Wait Times in Woodbridge

If you go to the emergency room in Virginia, how long will it take before you see a medical professional? The federal government says 33 minutes on average.

Residents of Woodbridge, whose closest emergency rooms include Sentara Northern Virginia Medical Center, the wait can be longer: The average wait time was 61 minutes according to a federal report.

In our chart above, you can compare Sentara with Inova Fairfax Hospital in six key measures, such as how long the average patient with a broken bone waited to receive pain medication. (Note: You can scroll down to the other comparisons by clicking within the chart; the chart may not be visible on a smartphone.)

New facilities in the Woodbridge area are seeking to address wait times. Sentara opened an out-patient clinic last year in Lake Ridge that includes a 24-hour emergency care center. And other urgent care centers have been opening in the area, including the new Patient First facility at Tackett's Mill. 

Sentara Medical Center has also made improvements in the past few months to address wait times, says Robin Adams, a Sentara spokesperson.

The hospital has added 20 telemetry beds for patients who have been seen by a doctor, but still require monitoring. This moves them out of the emergency department so that more patients can be seen.

The emergency department is also using an emergency medical record system so doctors can review tests and nurse notes and respond with treatment requests without having to be in the room, Adams said. The system also offers a checklist for nurses and staff when a patient has a general ailment, limiting the time the doctor is needed in consultation. 

And the department is also utilizing "split-flow," where patients with issues that can be addressed quickly are sent through a different line so the emergency department hub can be focused on patients requiring more complicated tests or treatment.

Compare for Yourself

Residents can compare the ER care for all Virginia hospitals in the national database on the Hospital Compare website. Type in a ZIP code, city or local hospital, then choose two or three hospitals to compare side-by-side.

Average values shown are median values, meaning half of all patients waited a longer amount of time and half waited less time. Sometimes, a sample of patients was used to estimate a performance measure’s value. Patch has excluded this value when the original data indicated the sample size was too small to provide a reliable estimate.

One of the most important indicators of a hospital’s emergency care quality is how long it takes to find room for patients after an emergency room doctor has decided to admit them to the hospital, said Leora Horwitz, M.D., of the Yale University School of Medicine.

This “boarding time,” as it is called, can put patients at risk for neglect, she said, because emergency room staff may have “washed their hands” of the patient.

However, lowering times on other measures, such as how many minutes patients waited to be admitted to the hospital, may not necessarily be a good thing, Horwitz said.

“One unintended consequence is rushed decision-making,” she said. For example, an ER doctor may hand the patient off to a colleague without having time to make a full diagnosis.

When it comes to our headline measure -- the “Door to doc” time, as Horwitz calls it -- the doctor pulls no punches.

“I don’t really care, frankly, how long someone with a cold waits,” she said. “Shorter is really better if you’re having a heart attack. Shorter doesn’t matter if you have a cold.”

Horwitz said the figures should take into account how sick a patient is, but still praised the release of these numbers by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

“Medicare is quite remarkable in collecting and reporting data,” Horwitz said. “This is the only way we have any idea what's going on in our hospitals.”

While hospitals routinely collect performance statistics, they are generally not released to the public, according to a report by Cheryl Clark, now senior quality editor for HealthLeaders Media.

“With precious little fanfare, Uncle Sam...rolled out a big, fat database with seven measures comparing a service that many people — healthcare providers and patients alike — consider the most critical any hospital can provide,” Clark wrote.

Clark interviewed Dr. Jesse Pines, an emergency room doctor and researcher who directs the center for healthcare quality at George Washington University.

“The theory is that when hospitals report this information, it makes them focus on it, and improve throughout their [Emergency Department],” Pines was quoted as saying.

“But it’s very hard to do. Certain performance measures are easier to fix — like simple process measures like giving patients an aspirin — than improving ED throughput, which involves development of interdisciplinary teams.”

Patch editors Aaron Boyd, Ken Stone, and Mark Maley contributed to this report.