Best Use of Resources

I'm out of the office today working in a small country ER. Fortunately the beautiful weather outside has made the level of traffic quite reasonable (I'm blogging, aren't I?)
But I find something quite fascinating.  We have a new electronic tracking board in the department, the big screen that shows us all the patients we have and where they are.  This board also allows me to look at the ER traffic in the larger ER about 15 minutes down the road in the next town.
As I type this, there is one patient in my waiting room, a kid with a bug bite, and no patients in the department.  In the bigger ER all the beds are full and there's 13 people in the waiting room.  All this only 15 minutes down the road!
One might wonder why such an unequal situation exists.  Well, it's because if the triage nurse at the other ER were to look at an obviously stable patient and say "Look, it's a 3 hour wait here but my computer tells me the other place down the road is empty, why don't you go there?" she'd get fired.  And even if she didn't, if the patient were to get into an accident or otherwise hurt themselves during the trip, the hospital would be blamed.  "He was in yuour ER and you sent him away?!" You can already hear the press howling.
It would make sense for the other ER to look at all their lower level patients and send them over here.  But it won't happen because the system won't allow it.
Not that I'm complaining.  Might even get a nap later...