Rochester hospital patients face prolonged ER wait times due to bed shortages

Rochester, N.Y. (WHAM)— Local hospitals continue to be weighed down by long wait times in the emergency room caused by a lack of hospital beds.

This is an ongoing issue for bothRochester Regional Health and UR Medicine, resulting in a seven-and-a-half-hour wait that felt like an eternity in the emergency room at Strong Memorial Hospital for Grace Mallett and her 80-year-old mother.

"The waiting room turned over, and the staff turned over, and we were still sitting there," Mallett explained.

She thought her mother would have seen a doctor sooner because of a possible head injury, but that wasn't the case.

"They must have triaged her and said 'We'll put her out there,'" Mallett explained. "And she was just sitting there by herself with this huge egg on her head. It just made me want to cry. I just felt so bad."

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According to data obtained by 13WHAM, Strong had 1,033 patients on Oct. 1, the day Mallett's mother was rushed to the ER.

That's 136 more patients than the hospital's 897-bed capacity, likely adding to the long wait.

"I was completely defeated," Mallett said. "I was so sad and so frustrated, and again, there is no one person to be angry with. I dealt with a lot of people, and they seemed nice, but the bigger picture is we are just not doing enough."

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Due to HIPAA rights, UR Medicine cannot comment on patients.

But Kathy Parrinello, Strong's president and CEO, spoke about hospital overcrowding and the lack of bed space, all contributing to longer wait times in the ER.

"Every patient is triaged within 15 to 30 minutes," Parrinello explained. "That means they're greeted as they sign in by a clinician, and based on that early assessment, they're triaged on have to be seen immediately, or can sit in the waiting room."

Parrinello said patients are not seen on a first-come, first-serve basis. Instead, it's based on the severity of the case.

"There are times when the ED is really busy and patients do wait a long time," she explained. "We don't like that, but by the same token, we have over 300 patients coming to our ED a day."

One reason for the backlog is some patients who are medically ready to leave the hospital are not discharged until a nursing home bed opens up.

"When patients come into the hospital through the ED and need to be admitted, they end up staying in the emergency department until the bed's ready," Parrinello said.

According to local hospitals, low Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates and rising costs have made it difficult for nursing homes to afford staffing for beds.

"There are still many of our nursing homes locally that can't staff all of their beds," Parrinello said. "That problem has been going on now for well over a year."

Parrinello said the Rochester region has the smallest number of hospital beds per capita compared to other areas in New York.

"Other parts of the state where they usually sit at 80-85% occupancy, they have nursing home patients, and they fill up," she explained. "We overfill in our region, and it's true not only of the UR Medicine system. It's true across all our hospitals in Rochester."

I checked in with Rochester Regional Health and found the same challenges at its hospitals.

An RRH spokesperson says the average wait from the time a patients comes into the ED at Rochester General Hospital until they're placed in a hospital bed is nearly 11 hours. That's down six hours from a year ago.

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RGH's ED has 72 rooms, and on average treats 83 patients around the clock, according to RRH. That number can sometimes be as high as 175 patients.

Both hospital systems tell me they're working with nursing homes and lawmakers to try to improve the situation, but acknowledge there's a lot of work to be done.

UR Medicine says if your injury or illness is minor, consider an urgent care facility before coming to the ER.

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