Emergency Department Overcrowding Lowers Patient Satisfaction Scores

Crowding in emergency departments (EDs) is a concern for hospital administrators, emergency providers, and patients. Many factors contribute to crowding, including variable patient volume and acuity along with contributing hospital factors such as inadequate nursing support and insufficient inpatient beds resulting in prolonged ED boarding times.1 In order to better study and define characteristics indicative of crowding, the National Emergency Department Overcrowding Study (NEDOCS) established a standardized and validated scoring system to quantify crowding in an academic setting.2 Although individual components attributed to crowding and patient satisfaction have been studied,3-5 including studies utilizing the NEDOCS score in relation to patient satisfaction,6 none to our knowledge have investigated the Press Ganey Associates, Inc (PGA) surveys and NEDOCS scores.