The days when a rape victim would sit for hours in a crowded emergency room only to be examined by a nurse with little experience in forensic evidence collection could be a thing of the past starting next month, when the mayor expands a highly successful rape response program to all municipal hospitals.

On March 1, the Sexual Assault Response Team will expand to municipal hospitals in Manhattan and Queens. The program has been in pilot runs in the Bronx since April 2004 and in Brooklyn since last June.

The program uses a team approach to respond to victims of rape.Within an hour of a victim’s arrival at a hospital emergency room that uses SART, a specially trained medical examiner, police officer, and counselor begin the process of treating the victim and starting an investigation into the crime.

The examination itself is grueling, highly invasive, and can last for several hours. The Sexual Assault Forensic Examiner is trained by the state to document every wound inside and outside the victim, as well as to collect samples to test for DNA.

Sart examination rooms, which are isolated from the bustle of the regular emergency room, include the use of a magnifying instrument called a colposcope to document internal genital injuries. Some examination rooms are also equipped with an ultraviolet lamp called a Wood lamp to detect secretions and injuries invisible to the naked eye, like bleeding under the skin.

In rape cases, evidence collection is extraordinarily important because juries can be hesitant to convict a rapist unless there is an injury, no matter how small, the chief of the sex crimes division at the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Lisa Friel, said.

“It makes a better case for me – especially in an acquaintance case,” she said. “Anything I can do to take it out of the ‘he said, she said’ testimony” is good for the case.

Another crucial component of the program is the counselor, known as an advocate, who walks the victim through the entire process. Sexual assault experts say that not only do advocates aid victims in more quickly recovering from a traumatic crime,but they help victims feel confident enough to press charges.

The NYPD Special Victims detective that responds to the hospital is also trained in how to handle a trauma victim, making for a more sensitive interview, rape crime experts said.

Expanding the program to six municipal hospitals in Manhattan and Queens will cost the city $800,000, the mayor’s deputy criminal justice coordinator, Richard Plansky, said.

Statistics suggest that the money will go a long way.

Fully 95% of rape victims brought to one of the Bronx’s municipal hospitals was seen by a medical examiner within an hour, a 51% improvement from before the program started, Mr. Plansky said. The use of a colposcope has nearly doubled the cases in which genital injuries are found. Medical examiners have also found about quarter more nongenital injuries.

In 60.2% of the rape kits collected at Bronx SART hospitals, DNA evidence was found, while the average for non-SART hospitals for the same time was 43.8%.

In Brooklyn, though the program isn’t even a year old,fully 93% of victims have been seen within an hour.With the use of a colposcope, 71% more genital injuries have been found than before the program started – and examiners have found 46% more nongenital injuries.

Although it is too soon to tell, the SART program may end up increasing the rape conviction rate, experts said.

“Better cooperation and better evidence equals better court outcomes,” Mr. Plansky said.

More important,Ms.Friel said,is that more rapists will be sent to prison. “It’s a very recidivist crime,” she said. With the program, “we can get these guys off the street after their first or second assault, rather than their fifth or sixth.”