3 1/2 hours, according to a study. After that, patient satisfaction scores plummet. I’m surprised the scores didn’t drop sooner than that.

To help with patient satisfaction, hospitals are resorting to a time-tested marketing tactic. Underpromise and overdeliver:

Basically, the docs calculated the mean time it took to get through the ER for a given test or procedure “” then added 20% when they told patients what to expect. In a standard patient satisfaction survey, all nine variables related to wait times improved after the ER adopted this policy (the improvement was statistically significant for five of the variables).

Some hospitals have signs up informing patients how long the wait is for certain tests. I don’t know why this hadn’t been thought of sooner.