Emergency Room, Why so slow?

I doing my usual blog hopping when I saw the name of Daniel P Neumeister mentioned in one of the articles.

Apparently, he is an Independent Consultant for Health care Executive and or Hospital Management. He has been around for 27 years and his expertise and finely honed hospital management skills earned him the respect of the people he worked with especially in the medical centers and community hospitals.

What caught my eye about him is the article he wrote regarding long wait in the ER suggesting that "available beds" are held off to the more able and paying patients by the hospital administration. This got me thinking right away, living in the 3rd world means most of the people have little or no money at all for hospitalization and if the ER hold off because they can't pay, what will happen to them? Die waiting?

Mr. Neumeister commented that agreeably there are many problems in the health care delivery system but this long wait in the ER is definitely not because of financial reasons. It is mostly due to short-staff and less attending physicians are around. The ER has become the entry point of patients where some physicians have decided to not treat these patients in their office.

In my experience, one time when Ozzy got high fever and his pedia was out of town and it was already late and no doctor was in at the time; I decided to bring him to the ER instead. Luckily for me, we didn't really wait that long because he had just high fever. But some patients with much more complicated illnesses had to wait to be served by specialist who were clearly overworked and understaffed.

I've seen a lot of medical shows to know that most often than not, the hospital is understaffed and that's the cause of the delay in the ER and not because the patient cannot pay. At least that good to know, better that thank discrimination any day.