United States' Performance on Emergency Department Throughput, 2006 to 2016.

Study Objective: Studies of early data found that US emergency departments (EDs) were characterized by prolonged patient waiting, long visit times, frequent and prolonged boarding (ie, patients kept waiting in ED hallways or other space outside the ED on admission to the hospital), and patients leaving without receiving or completing treatment. We sought to assess recent trends in ED throughput nationally.

Methods: This was a retrospective cross-sectional analysis of data from the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey from 2006 to 2016.