In other cities, hospitals buy billboards with digital readouts of the number of minutes you’ll wait for treatment in the emergency room. “Get treated, not seated,” said one in Alaska. Parkridge Medical Center in Chattanooga puts its ER wait times on billboards and on its website. The Carolinas HealthCare System in Charlotte lists current waits at its 12 hospitals and 21 urgent care centers.
Metro Atlanta hospitals are much less likely to call attention to their ER waits. For most of those hospitals, you won’t see the numbers on a billboard, but you can find them in data posted by the federal government.
At Piedmont Hospital in Buckhead, patients typically waited 92 minutes in the ER before seeing a doctor — more than three times the national average, according to the latest federal data.
It gets worse. Emergency room patients at Grady Memorial Hospital waited an average 201 minutes before seeing a doctor — one of the longest averages in America. At Emory Midtown on Peachtree Street the wait to see a doctor was more than four times the national average.
Anyone who has experienced a long wait in the emergency room knows it’s unpleasant. But experts say the wait can also be dangerous.
Subscribers can get the full story on ER wait times, plus extensive graphics listing nearly 20 metro Atlanta hospitals, at myajc.com.
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