Why Hospital ER Wait Times Are So Long & Finding An Alternative

What Causes Long ER Wait Times: Everything You Need To Know

The last thing anyone wants to do when they’re sick or injured is sit in a crowded waiting room. That’s why long wait times for emergency room (ER) care are high on the list of complaints from patients seeking care.

While extended waits in the ER are often a year-round problem, the winter months and early spring can be especially bad as cold and flu season peaks. This brings both more patients to the ER and can potentially impact ER staffing levels due to illness.

Do Hospitals Mislead You About ER Wait Times?

It’s not uncommon for hospitals to tout short ER wait times. Some even go so far as including a digital clock outside their facility (or on a billboard) displaying their current wait time. But it’s not that simple.

“Usually, the published wait time is the time it takes to see a medical provider,” explains Eric Wilke, MD, an ER physician and chief operations officer of The Emergency Center. “That just means the initial contact. Not that you’re having your treatment started in that amount of time.”

During this ‘initial contact,’ the medical provider is normally determining how severe a condition might be and not necessarily finding a precise diagnosis and beginning treatment accordingly. Based on this assessment by an emergency room physician, physician assistant or nurse practitioner, patients may be sent back to the waiting room or be held in another area, often for hours.

A more useful time to consider is how long you may spend in a hospital ER. Those average times can vary significantly depending on location, time of year and even time of day with late afternoon and evenings being the busiest. Broken down by state, average times for an ER visit range from one hour and 50 minutes in North Dakota to more than five hours in Washington, DC, according to 2024 data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid.

Why Are Emergency Room Wait Times Getting Longer?

“There are several reasons wait times in hospital emergency rooms are going up,” says Dr. Wilke. A big part of the issue boils down to simple numbers:

• Fewer ER beds available: “Every year we have more people visiting the emergency room, but at the same time, when you look at the total number of emergency room beds, those are actually going down,” he says. This is in part due to hospital closures and consolidations, which reduces space available to see patients.
• Emergency department boarding: In hospitals, a certain percentage of patients who come through the ER need to be admitted to the hospital for care or observation. Unfortunately, there’s sometimes no appropriate bed available inside the hospital so that patient has to stay where they are until a bed opens up. This creates a traffic jam in the ER.
• Shared resources: Most of the time, hospital ERs have to share certain resources with other hospital departments. “Big hospitals have one lab. And all the lab work for patients at the hospital goes through that lab because it’s more efficient for the hospital,” explains Dr. Wilke (though he notes some ERs have limited lab capabilities). “If you send a lab from the emergency room to the hospital’s central lab, it’s put in line with everyone else who’s in the hospital, so you have to wait for the results to come back.”

This can also be true for certain imaging procedures like CT scans, since a hospital may only have one imaging unit that has to be shared among patients across the hospital.

Avoiding Long ER Waits: A Faster Emergency Care Alternative

Some people make the mistake of confusing a freestanding ERs like The Emergency Center with an urgent care clinic. But that’s not the case. Unlike most urgent care clinics, The Emergency Center is open 24/7 (like a hospital ER) and has the capability to treat most the conditions a hospital ER treats.

“I think people should realize it’s probably a 70 to 80 percent replacement of a hospital emergency room,” says Dr. Wilke about freestanding ERs. This includes the ability to treat most abdominal pain, respiratory illnesses, wounds and bone injuries of all types, allergic reactions and much more.

The Emergency Center doesn’t have to deal with delays associated with boarding issues. It also has an onsite lab, imaging and pharmacy exclusively for its patients. This strategy eliminates some of the key causes underpinning long hospital ER waits.

“Usually by the time a patient arrives and completes check-in at our registration desk,” says Dr. Wilke, “we’re ready to put them in a room to be cared for.”

For sick or injured patients, an empty waiting room is a welcome sight.

The Emergency Center

San Antonio
11320 Alamo Ranch Pkwy
San Antonio, TX 78253
Phone: 210-485-3644

Conroe
4019 Interstate 45 N,
Conroe, TX 77304
Phone: 936-247-9457