"Too long waiting for triage"

I attended A&E last night with my boyfriend who has an extensive history with asthma including ICU admission and respiratory arrest, due to him being SOB and wheezy. We booked in and waited 40mins without being triaged in which time only 2 people were called for triage. I spoke to reception and asked how long the wait for triage was as my boyfriend was really struggling and was told it was over an hour and there was 4 people still in front of him. We then promptly left and drove to another ED where we were triaged and moved to resus within 5 minutes. I work as a nurse in another busy ED in manchester and feel there needs to be some system of alerting the triage nurses to people booking in with conditions that could deteriorate in the WR in order for them to prioritise their triage queue.