ICUs and other hospital units are staffed with doctors, nurses and other support
personnel who have specialized training and experience caring for critically ill
patients in need of specific medical interventions, whereas the mission of emergency
department medical workers is to quickly assess patients, stabilize them and get
them to where they need to be.

“The problem is you can’t get them to where they need to be, and now it puts the
ER doc in the position of having to function like the hospitalist or the intensive
care doctor, and that’s not a role that we’re really supposed to be in,” said
Dr. Cedric Dark, an emergency physician at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
“The bad thing about having any patient boarded in the emergency department,
regardless of the situation, is that it slows down the beginning of care for somebody
who needs hospitalization, and the beginning of care for any medical condition is
the most crucial period of time.”