With increased risks of food poisoning, burns from cooking, car accident injuries and the rise of wintertime ailments like the flu, the holiday season can result in more trips to emergency rooms.
But in Maryland, higher rates of emergency room visits may exacerbate an existing issue: it can take hours or close to a day between arriving at the emergency room and actually receiving care. State and local officials are trying to determine why emergency room wait times are so long in Maryland.
Wait times in the state are longer than the national average, according the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission, which oversees and regulates hospital rates in the state.
According to September data, the shortest median wait time, from arrival to inpatient admission, was about 3.3 hours, or just over 200 minutes, at Atlantic General in Berlin on the Eastern Shore. In 2020, the median emergency room wait time in the United States was 286 minutes, or 4.7 hours, according to U.S. News.
September data for Maryland show that Atlantic General was the only emergency department that fell below what was the national median in 2020. The remaining 39 emergency rooms reported a median wait time of over 5 hours.
Click here to read the rest of the article written by Danielle J. Brown over at Maryland Matters
