Utah's emergency room visits are relatively short — but waits are rising
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Utahns spent 2 hours, 17 minutes on emergency room visits last year.
- That's based on a 12-month average between Oct. 1, 2021, and Sept. 30, 2022, according to the latest Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) data.
By the numbers: That's up from 2 hours, 15 minutes in 2021 (a pandemic year) and 2 hours, 6 minutes in 2014.
- But it's shorter than the median of 2 hours, 40 minutes spent in emergency rooms nationwide in 2022 — a number that's been rising steadily in recent years.
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 need or is facing other issues.
- "Long stays in the emergency department before a patient leaves may be a sign that the emergency department is understaffed or overcrowded," per CMS. "This may result in delays in treatment, increased suffering for those who wait, and unpleasant treatment environments."
Of note: This data captures the length of patients' entire ER visits, not just time spent waiting to be first seen.
The big picture: The increase comes as hospitals face a staffing crisis amid surging youth mental health emergencies.
- 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: Fears of getting stuck at the ER for hours on end are fueling a boom in urgent care and retail health clinics, as we've previously reported.
Of note: The CMS data covers more than 4,000 Medicare-certified hospitals nationwide.