It's not exclusive to that one hospital, either - when I was having my stroke, Swedish Hospital (Littleton, CO) triage nurses bumped me to the back. After the first hour of waiting, my husband told them I needed help RIGHT NOW or he was taking me to another hospital. The triage nurses snapped "Oh, you'll never get in anywhere, every hospital in the city is packed, you need to go back and wait." (Plenty of ambulatory and conscious patients were called to be seen before us while I drooled and slumped over in my chair.) They refused to call the hospital down the street where my doctor worked to even see about wait times for a stroke patient.

Less than fifteen minutes later we were down the street at Porter's empty ER with an IV and stroke meds in my neck. (Which is where they had to put the IV since my circulation was shut down that much.)

Swedish is supposed to be the #1 hospital in Colorado and has an attached brain injury/rehabilitation center. And they bumped a stroke patient to the back. This woman dying could just as easily have happened there, and I hate going to a hospital alone for just that reason.