Indiana ER wait times stay below national average
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Hoosiers spend less time in emergency rooms than other Americans on average, but more than we used to, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Driving the news: The state's average time spent in an ER was 2 hours, 18 minutes in 2022, according to the latest CMS data.
Yes, but: That figure is roughly on par with 2 hours, 17 minutes in 2021 (a pandemic year), but up from about 2 hours, 2 minutes in 2014.
- Indiana's average fell below the national median of 2 hours, 40 minutes in 2022.
Why it matters: Time spent in the ER is a key metric for tracking hospital performance, and it's been steadily rising across the country.
- Increasing ER visit times are an indication that a hospital may be understaffed relative to a community's need or is facing other issues.
Zoom out: Washington, D.C., hospitals racked up the longest median time for ER stays in 2022, at 5 hours and 29 minutes.
- North Dakota (1 hour, 48 minutes) had the lowest median time.
Be smart: This data captures the length of patients' entire ER visits, not just the time spent waiting to be first seen and covers more than 4,000 Medicare-certified hospitals nationwide.
Plus: According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, Indiana saw the sixth-highest per capita emergency room visits in 2021 in the country, at 485 per 1,000 residents.
- That was down from a high of 553 visits per 1,000 in 2018.
The big picture: The steady nationwide increase in ER wait times comes as hospitals face a staffing crisis — a problem plaguing all sorts of vital industries, from health care to teachers to air traffic controllers.
- Emergency rooms are also struggling with unique challenges, including a lack of resources to handle a surging youth mental health crisis.
- Youth mental health-related ER visits approximately doubled between 2011 and 2020, per a May report in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
- "Emergency rooms weren't designed to be mental health providers, but limited mental health support for children outside of hospitals has led to understaffed ERs being overwhelmed by young patients with behavioral emergencies," Axios' Sabrina Moreno recently reported.
The intrigue: Fear of getting stuck at the ER for hours on end is fueling a boom in urgent care and retail health clinics, including in Indiana, which has seen high growth in the industry.