{"id":1005082,"date":"2026-08-16T20:22:27","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T20:22:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1005082\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T20:22:27","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T20:22:27","slug":"in-ct-hospital-ers-patients-may-wait-hours-for-a-hospital-bed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1005082\/","title":{"rendered":"In CT hospital ERs, patients may wait hours for a hospital bed"},"content":{"rendered":"

In emergency departments<\/a> across the state, patients are spending hours on stretchers in hospital hallways as they wait for inpatient beds or transfer to another unit.<\/p>\n

The practice, known as \u201cboarding,\u201d<\/a> is increasing in the state and country, impacting patient care and resulting in death in some older patients, according to lawmakers and physicians.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cOftentimes, you may have patients that stay for days literally under fluorescent lights in a hallway waiting for a bed upstairs,\u201d said Dr. Christopher Moore, a board member of the Connecticut College of Emergency Physicians, which launched a dashboard last fall that tracks annual admission data to hospitals including the percentage of patients boarding for more than four hours in the ER.<\/p>\n

The dashboard<\/a> notes that in 2025,\u201d38.1%of admitted patients in the state of Connecticut boarded for 4 hours or more in 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sicker and aging patients requiring a longer stay at the hospital, along with staffing shortages, Medicaid cuts, difficulty accessing step-down care and a lack of adequate outpatient services, are all factors affecting boarding at hospitals, according to several lawmakers and physicians.<\/p>\n

Hospitals say they are making renovations to their emergency rooms and opening urgent care centers to address the issue. Several lawmakers said they expect to revisit the issue in the next session. The stagnation of Medicaid reimbursement rates, a pain point at all hospitals may be a factor impacting staffing and boarding rates, according to lawmakers.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur reimbursement rates are among the lowest in the nation, and cost of insurance among the highest,\u201d said Sen. Heather Somers, a Groton Republican and a ranking member of the Public Health Committee. \u201cI support increasing Medicaid reimbursement, expanding affordable and accessible insurance choices through policies like association health plans, and fully funding the nonprofits that provide critical mental health and addiction services in our communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul Kidwell, senior vice president of policy for the Connecticut Hospital Association, said there are several efforts underway that will help in reducing hospital boarding including \u201cenhanced triage processes, fast-track pathways for lower-acuity patients, temporary observation units, and new approaches that allow care to begin earlier in the visit.\u201d<\/p>\n

The impact of hospital boarding<\/p>\n

Moore said patients are often found in hallways because there is not enough space due to boarding issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no privacy,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are often unable to undress them and fully examine them. So, things get missed and that\u2019s because the hospitals are backing up the emergency departments with admitted patients.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moore said older patients can become disoriented and delirious after long periods in the ER, raising the risk of falls.<\/p>\n

Boarding also impacts the timely delivery of care for patients, Moore said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t get the medication they should because the nurse is overwhelmed and they\u2019re dealing with incoming patients,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

State Sen. Saud Anwar, co-chair of the state\u2019s Public Health Committee, called the practice \u201cunsafe and unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf somebody is on a stretcher for 24 hours, they are not getting moved and they are not getting fed,\u201d he said. \u201cThey are not getting the care they deserve and they need.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Brady, executive vice president of AFT Connecticut, said that boarding patients is a symptom of a much more serious condition.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnderstaffing throughout the system is almost always to blame when the patient census exceeds capacity to provide the care they deserve,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Lindsay Overhage, a Ph.D. student at Harvard Medical School, said \u201cthere is a fair amount of research\u201d showing that critically ill patients who are in the ER longer are associated with longer hospital stays and extended treatments.<\/p>\n

A real-time dashboard<\/p>\n

Anwar said he would like to see the establishment of a permanent Office of Hospital and Emergency care to monitor data trends, maintain a public real-time dashboard of hospital boarding and mandate a stable Medicaid rate structure. Those changes were based on recommendations from a taskforce, Anwar said.<\/p>\n

Rep. Cristin McCarthy Vahey, a Fairfield Democrat and co-chair of the Public Health Committee, said in light of \u201cfederal cuts to healthcare coverage\u201d for thousands of Connecticut families,\u201d there will be a need to address hospital boarding in the upcoming session.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis will leave families with the emergency department as their only choice for care and cause further strain on the healthcare professionals providing care,\u201d said McCarthy Vahey.<\/p>\n

First in the country<\/p>\n

In 2024, a new state law, the first in the country, went into effect, requiring hospitals to report hospital boarding data to the state.<\/p>\n

The CCEP dashboard annually updates its data based on that information. In 2025, the latest data available, 38.1% of admitted patients in the state boarded for four hours or more, according to the CCEP dashboard.<\/p>\n

Also in 2025, Hartford Hospital, Saint Francis Hospital, Saint Mary\u2019s Hospital and MidState Medical Center, were listed as having more than 50% of its patients boarded for four hours or more, with Hartford Hospital having the highest percentage, at 62%.<\/p>\n

The data remained mainly unchanged from 2024 to 2025, with a 0.6% drop in the number of patients\u00a0in the state boarded for four hours or more.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny decline in emergency department boarding is welcome, but a small percentage drop should not give us a false sense of progress,\u201d Somers said. \u201cConnecticut\u2019s numbers remain staggeringly high, some of the highest in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

CCEP dashboard<\/p>\n

The latest data from the CCEP dashboard in 2025 shows that at Hartford Hospital, patients waited on average 8.9 hours in the ER before an order was put in place for an inpatient bed. And at Saint Francis Hospital, patients were waiting, on average, 5.7 hours.<\/p>\n

Tina Varona, senior director for media relations at Hartford HealthCare, which owns Hartford Hospital, said the hospital \u201cremains firmly committed to improving access to care and addressing emergency department capacity challenges in Hartford and across the region.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added that Hartford HealthCare-Go Urgent Care opened a new center just steps from the hospital, \u201cwith the intent to offer improved access for lower acuity care.<\/p>\n

The first phase of an emergency department renovation is also underway, bringing 30 additional beds this fall, Varona added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe redesigned space will directly address overcrowding, patient boarding, and patient flow to improve overall safety and access to care,\u201d she said. \u201cIt will include a new front entrance with reimagined areas for check-in, waiting and triage, and will be home to new treatment beds and a medical observation unit.\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Trinity Health of New England, which owns Saint Francis Hospital, said the Catholic health organization has taken several steps to address hospital boarding issues including \u201creopening an observation unit to help decompress the emergency department, enhancing care coordination and discharge planning and streamlining emergency department workflows.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese efforts are delivering results, including reductions in hospital length of stay over the past six months, while maintaining our focus on safety, quality and the patient experience,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

The spokesperson said as a Level I Trauma Center, the hospital cares \u201cfor a high volume of emergency department patients\u201d with patient volume and the severity of a patient\u2019s needs fluctuating significantly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In emergency departments across the state, patients are spending hours on stretchers in hospital hallways as they wait…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1005083,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[35],"tags":[402350,7000,402351,7001,310270,210,1141,1142,402352,62333,201814,49328,239736,27557,239734,315091,273318,239737,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1005082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-connecticut-college-of-emergency-physicians","tag-ct-news","tag-dr-christopher-moore","tag-hartford-courant","tag-hartford-hospital","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-hospital-boarding","tag-hospital-wait-times","tag-max-image-preview","tag-patient-care","tag-patient-deaths","tag-patient-safety","tag-saint-francis-hospital","tag-saint-marys-hospital","tag-sen-heather-somers","tag-sen-saud-anwar","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1005082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1005083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1005082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1005082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1005082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}