Emergency room visits are getting longer in Virginia
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The median time Virginians spent in emergency rooms was 2 hours, 52 minutes last year — the longest in a steady increase from pre-pandemic times, according to the latest Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data.
Why it matters: Time spent in the ER is a key metric for tracking hospital performance.
- Increasing ER visit times is an indication that a hospital may be understaffed relative to a community's needs or is facing other problems.
Zoom in: Virginians' average wait time increased from 2 hours, 45 minutes in 2021 (a pandemic year) and 2 hours, 24 minutes in 2014.
Zoom out: Washington, D.C. hospitals racked up the longest median time for ER stays in 2022, at 5 hours and 29 minutes, followed by Maryland (4 hours, 2 minutes).
- North Dakota (1 hour, 48 minutes), South Dakota and Nebraska (1 hour, 55 minutes) had the shortest times spent in ERs.
Be smart: This data captures the length of patients' entire ER visits, not just the time spent waiting to be first seen.