New research has measured how long an emergency room visit lasts in every state, and it puts California near the top of the table.
The study, by EMR software review site FindEMR, analyzed federal records covering 4,017 hospitals and 137 million emergency room visits a year, then ranked each state by the average length of a visit.
California posted an average visit of 3 hours, 27 minutes, measured across 259 hospitals that report the figure to the federal government. This ranks the Golden State 10th slowest on the list, just below Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Vermont.
The typical hospital there sits at 180 minutes, and the range runs from 76 minutes at the quickest to 456 minutes at the slowest. Patients seen in California for a mental health crisis average 5 hours, 14 minutes in the emergency room, 1 hour, 46 minutes more than everyone else waits at the same hospitals.
Roughly 2.1% of patients arriving at an emergency room in California leave again before anyone sees them.
Of the 259 hospitals behind that average, 250 report on a full reporting period. The longest typical visit is 7 hours, 36 minutes at Loma Linda University Medical Center in Loma Linda, and the shortest is 1 hour, 16 minutes at Southern Monterey County Memorial Hospital in King City.
Waits in California are longer than they were in 2019. For discharged patients, the state has added 20 minutes since 2019, moving from 185 minutes to 205 minutes.
California borders three states; the slowest of them is Arizona at 3 hours, 17 minutes, 17th nationally, and the quickest, Nevada, is ranked 32nd at 2 hours, 48 minutes.
A spokesperson from FindEMR commented on the findings: “While many of the states’ average wait times compared to others may come as a surprise to some, it’s more shocking to see the gap between those patients in need of mental health support, and those in the waiting room generally. To see some states have a near-exact average for these patient groups, and some to have a gap of hours, is seriously concerning, and it shows that some states aren’t prioritizing those in a mental health crisis at the same rate as everyone else, or that they just don’t have the resources to do so.”