Despite increases in the use of emergency department (EDs) for mental health care, there are limited data on whether psychiatric patients disproportionately contribute to ED crowding. We conducted a retrospective analysis using a national database of ED visits in the period 2002-11 to describe trends in median and ninetieth-percentile length-of-stay for patients with psychiatric versus nonpsychiatric primary diagnoses. Psychiatric patients who visited the ED were transferred to another facility at six times the rate of nonpsychiatric patients. Median lengths-of-stay were similar for psychiatric and nonpsychiatric patients among those who were admitted to the hospital (264 versus 269 minutes) but significantly different for those who were admitted for observation (355 versus 279 minutes), transferred (312 versus 195 minutes), or discharged (189 versus 144 minutes). Overall, differences in ED length-of-stay between psychiatric and nonpsychiatric patients did not narrow over time. These findings suggest deficiencies in ED capacity for psychiatric care, which may necessitate improvements in both throughput and alternative models of care.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 337. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 01 February 2026.
All research outputs
#122,338
of 34,277,148 outputs
Outputs from Health Affairs
#348
of 7,133 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#2,091
of 337,724 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Health Affairs
#9
of 112 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,277,148 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 7,133 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 69.2. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 95% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 337,724 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 112 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 91% of its contemporaries.
