Background and purpose: Coronary artery disease is a major cause of death and disability in any society. The aim of this research was to evaluate the factors causing delay in admission of patients who need cardiac care.

Materials and methods: In this descriptive analytic study, we used the files of patients attending a heart hospital affiliated with Mazandaran University of Medical sciences within 6 months (March-September 2015).  Data analyses were done applying Quantile regression in STATA V13 and SPSS V20.

Results: from 401 patients, 59.35% referred to hospital within the first 3 hours after imitation of pain, while 20.45% and 20.2% attended the hospital after 3 hours and 6 hours following the onset of pain, respectively. The average hospitalization waiting time was 238 min (almost 4 hr). Our results showed that waiting time was lower for male patients, people with higher education, those with health insurance, individuals with history of cardiac diseases, married cases and urban patients. These variables had significantly affected the hospitalization waiting time (P <0.05).

Conclusion: Improving the knowledge of people about the symptoms of heart disease could be of great benefit in decreasing the rate of complications caused by long delays in hospitalization.