Longer ER Waits for Mentally Ill

USA Today reports on a study of hospital ERs by the American College of Emergency Physicians. They found that psychiatric patients wait four hours or more to be admitted. Why:

Only half of the 328 hospitals surveyed had psychiatric units. The rest transferred patients, sometimes far from homes and families. Hospitals are closing their units because of inadequate payments from government and insurers, unpaid costs for the uninsured and too few psychiatrists willing to work in hospitals, says James Bentley of the American Hospital Association.