Wait times in the emergency room keep growing, with some hospitals making people wait as long as five or more hours for their emergency to be treated.
Urgent care and telemedicine are always an option, but in the case of a real emergency, people are being forced to wait.
At the moment, according to CNY Central, the wait times for the downtown campus are over 5 hours.
This appears to be a nationwide issue, as hospitals in other areas like Columbus, Ohio seeing 5 hour wait times, Grand Rapids, Michigan seeing 240 patients per day instead of their regular average of 160, and even children’s emergency rooms in Chicago are filled to capacity after so many believed children were safe from the virus.
Paramedics are also impacted by long wait times when they’re diverted to other hospitals, forcing them to take longer to respond to other emergencies after bringing someone in.
When ambulances are diverted, it means the hospital that diverted them is at a dangerously high capacity.
Experts felt that the healthcare field was already stretched thin, and the pandemic has only exasperated the issue. Unless reworking of the system is done, some feel this issue will carry on for years to come.
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