Hoping to spread out emergency traffic across its three locations, Middlesex Hospital in Connecticut has started putting ED waiting times online to direct patients to the facility with the shortest door-to-doctor wait, based on current patient volume. "Most of our patients live in between our facilities and can now choose the one that offers the shortest wait," Middlesex emergency medicine Chairman Dr. Michael Saxe tells the Hartford Courant.

Lest you think it's cruel to ask friends and family of patients with true emergencies to fire up their computers and scout out the shortest waiting time while a patient may be dying, the idea behind the program is to ease overcrowding by the uninsured who visit hospitals for "free" primary care, and to alleviate problems associated with a shortage of specialists.

Results elsewhere have varied. The Connecticut program is modeled after one in New Orleans, a city with a high rate of uninsured residents four years after Hurricane Katrina. There, studies have found that a good number of patients would seek out the emergency department with the shortest reported wait. Lack of insurance isn't the sole motivator, though, as the experience of Massachusetts demonstrates. There, the Courant reports, ED visits went up even after that state expanded health coverage for poor residents in 2006.

For more:
- have a look at the Courant story

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