The Prince George’s County Council’s Board of Health brought in leaders of four hospitals to look at emergency room wait times.
There are complaints that patients are waiting for many hours to be seen in the ER. Those complaints are largely from University of Maryland Capital Region Medical Center in Largo.
“I am gravely concerned about this issue, and one of the reasons why is because of Capital Region,” Councilwoman Wala Blegay said. “We have received many, many complaints.”
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Health leaders shared stories of a complicated health care landscape.
“I think it is real, and we always need to be sensitive and acknowledge the community’s concerns,” said Deneen Richmond of Luminis Health. “We’re here to serve the community.”
Health care providers said some of the drivers of the long waits are:
- Staffing shortages,
- Not enough specialty care doctors,
- Patients with complex physical and mental health issues,
- Limited space to meet the community’s needs,
- And the need for more people to go to urgent care or primary care doctors.
“When you don’t have enough providers, this is what happens,” said Eunmee Shim of Adventist HealthCare Fort Washington. “People will use hospitals to take care of their health issues.”
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Tami Douglas said her husband spent 15 hours waiting to be treated at Capital Region last month.
“We were just sitting there listening to the other people complain,” she said. “They said they had been there, some say they had been there 18 hours.”
Two leaders from the hospital gave a presentation that included graphs showing patients are usually seen within an hour and the time spent from ER arrival to discharge is trending downward.
“Speaking not specific case but in general around long wait times – 10, 12, 14 even – those are typically inpatients which we expect to have a longer time period, but there are things needed to bring that time down,” said Dr. Tom-meka Archinard of Capital Region.
The hearing intended to collect information to get a big picture idea of what’s causing the challenges and to see if the council can develop policies to help bring it under control.
According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Maryland has the worst hospital ER wait times in the nation at an average of almost four hours.
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