Despite a national reputation for excellence, Massachusetts hospitals lag behind the rest of the nation in emergency room wait times – by as much as 10 minutes in some instances, according to federal data for 2015 reviewed by the NewBostonPost.
The greatest discrepancy is among local hospitals with high-volume ERs – between 40,000 and 60,000 patients a year. The average wait time in these hospitals is 42 minutes, compared with a national average of 29 minutes. The gap narrows slightly for medium-volume emergency departments – 20,000 to 40,000 patients annually – where the state average is 36 minutes, compared to 25 minutes nationally, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court struck down Texas' widely replicated regulation of abortion clinics Monday in the court's biggest abortion case in nearly a quarter century.
The justices voted 5-3 in favor of Texas clinics that had argued the regulations were a thinly veiled attempt to make it harder for women to get an abortion in the nation's second-most populous state.
