You could call it “salt in an open wound.”

The last thing you want when you go to the emergency room is to wait. But wait until you hear how long you can expect to be there.

Press Ganey Associates, South Bend, conducted a national survey on emergency rooms. The study shows, on average, patents wait four hours and five minutes from the time they walk in the door to the time they leave.

Indiana ranks 17th. The average wait here is three hours and 37 minutes.

Michigan is ranked 32nd. Patents there wait, on average, four hours and eight minutes.

"It's unscheduled medical care,” explains Dr. Mark Kricheff, Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center. “We don't make appointments. Which means the sickest people that come in need to be taken care of first, even if you've been there longer."

"I totally understand that. I understand that. There is life threatening injuries that have to be taken care of first," Latrina King says as she sits in the waiting room at SJRMC.

However, Latrina, like most Americans, want to be informed on what’s going on and how long their wait will be.

"That lets you know you're not being ignored. They are really here for you," Latrina says.

According to Press Ganey’s findings, patents who were in and out in less than an hour, but, who were poorly informed on the progress, were only about 43% satisfied.

Patients who waited four hours or more, but were kept in the loop and pleased with the communication, were almost 97% satisfied.

"The thing that frustrates patients most, is when they're waiting, they want to know what they're waiting for," Dr. Kricheff explains.

At SJRMC, the ER added more nurses and shortened the number of questions asked to patents when they first arrive to speed up the process.

"It's really about the flow,” says Wojtek Staniszewski from SJRMC’s ER. “How soon the patient can get to the room. How the soon the physician can see the patient. And how quickly we can get the patient out of here."

Memorial Hospital is planning on building a free standing emergency room in Mishawaka to help absorb the demand.

More people are using the emergency room than in years past, and that’s clearly adding to the wait time. Press Ganey and ER personnel say many patients go to the emergency room for aliments and problems they should be taking to their primary care doctor or another facility.