Patients experiencing hours-long wait times at Manchester emergency departments
MANCHESTER, N.H. —
A New Hampshire man says he and his father had to wait nine hours in a Manchester emergency department to see a doctor, highlighting what health officials call a growing problem.
Eric York, of Candia, said his father was taken by ambulance Monday from the VA Medical Center to Catholic Medical Center, where he was left sitting in a chair in a hospital gown for nine hours.
“There’s nowhere to go in New Hampshire with all the ERs full,” York said.
On Tuesday, Catholic Medical Center was experiencing wait times of three and a half hours, while the wait was just under four hours at Elliot Hospital. The average national wait time is about three hours.
>> Download the free WMUR app to get updates on the go <<
Doctors at Elliot Hospital say long wait times are common, pointing to strains on the health care system as a whole.
An emergency doctor at Elliot said the emergency department is not only seeing acute emergencies, but also people who are experiencing delays in getting appointments with specialists or primary care physicians.
With no rooms available in skilled nursing facilities, beds aren’t opening up for people in emergency departments.
York said he understands what hospitals are going through.
“They are obviously triaging right, but when you don’t have the beds and you don’t have the staff, you can only do what you can do with what you got,” he said.
By Tuesday afternoon, York said his father was still waiting for a bed to open up at the hospital.