I always read on hospital websites, things like ‘our hospital emergency room is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.’
Has anyone ever run across an actual hospital emerency room that is not open 24 hours? I mean an actual ER capable of treating all emergencies, not urgent care centers.
Yes, primarily in smaller towns where there aren’t enough specialists (surgeons, radiologists, etc.) to staff an ER 24/7. If there’s a genuine disaster they might be able to call someone to come in, but they aren’t as a rule “open to the public.”
I googled around and so far I ran across one in Bowie. MD, I’m not sure if it’s a true emergency room or an urgent care center. It says it handles ‘level 2 emergencies’ and indicated that some of it’s patient came to be treated for heart attacks, but I still can’t tell as this isn’t a hospital.
I’ve seen hospitals with ER hours. My understanding is ‘Emergency rooms’ have specific requirements of staff and equipment which not all hospitals can provide 24/7. Someone would probably provide emergency care or at least get an ambulance there to take you to another hospital. The hours are more along the line of don’t come here on off hours we might not have what you need or if your injury isn’t life threatening we’re going send you somewhere else. ie The guy with gunshot wounds would probably get stabilized while little Bobby needing stitches for his paper cut is going to be sent packing.
I could imagine in a large town with several hospitals, especially if they are owned by the same group, they might close down one of the ERs late at night and direct people to the next closest one.
When I’m at my house, within a 10 minute drive I can get to at least 4 ERs that are part of two groups (Aurora and Wheaton Franciscan). Sure, it would suck to get to one that’s three blocks away and find out it’s closed if I just cut my finger off, but from a monetary point of view it might make sense for them to direct people to the other one a few miles away and not have that one staffed from, say, 11pm-5am M-Th.
It might even be cheaper for them to keep a pair of EMTs and an ambulance on hand so when some does show up in really bad shape they can get them to the other ER even faster.
There are two towns nearby (20 minutes from each other) with populations under 9,000 each. Both had hospitals, but difficulties attracting and retaining medical staff and recent funding cuts resulted in changes. Now one town has an expanded hospital that serves the entire region with a 24 hour emergency room and the other town has a much smaller hospital with an emergency room open from 8 am to 8 pm. You might consider the smaller hospital an urgent care center now, but if you have a heart attack in the middle of the day the ambulance will take you to the nearest hospital, after hours you’ll go to the larger regional hospital.
The emergency room at the hospital closest to me doesn’t close as such, but unless it’s a real emergency, there isn’t any surgery or x-rays at night.
My understanding of the EMTALA law is that any hospital accepting Medicare/Medicaid is required to have 24hr Emergency services available to provide them mandated medical screening examination for emergent medical conditions. In very small towns, I would imaging this would require at least some provider (MD, PA, NP etc) to decide if the patient requires transfer to a different facility that can provide any necessary treatments not available.
I do work in many, many small hospitals around VT, NH, and northern NY, and I can actually only think of two.
One isn’t a real ER/ED, just a beefed-up walk-in clinic/urgent care center, and it’s in a satellite hospital of the larger medical center a few miles away. I think it closes at 9 or 10 PM. But it does differ from most walk-in clinics and urgent care centers in that it is a real hospital, too. It has an in-patient unit, an OR, a radiology department, a lab, etc…
The other one is in the smallest hospital I have ever seen. It’s in Star Lake, NY, which is a town less than 1,000 people. It’s ER is also the only literal emergency room I have ever seen.
One room, with two beds and a curtain between them. It is pretty much only open/staffed during first and second shift. It can’t do any real serious trauma, either. If you have a heart attack they have the ability to monitor you, they have a defib, but as soon as your stable you’re getting transported somewhere better…it’s almost equidistant from either Canton-Potsdam hospital in Potsdam, or Adirondack Medical Center in Saranac Lake. There’s a good chance they’ll just send you to one of those two in the first place if they think it’s serious.
It’s fine for getting sutures, setting a broken bone, etc…but not much else. The in-patient ward is only 15 beds or so, no ICU, no bedside monitors, just rolling stand BP/pulse ox machines and three telemetry units. No OR, two DI rooms, one with a standard X-ray, the other with a CT.
I honestly have no idea how it stays in business. Heck, last time i was there they were starting a new addition!
This must be the hospital
It’s a critical access hospital meaning it gets funds from the state because it provides medical services to undeserved rural areas.
Huh…could have fooled me regarding it’s capabilities. I’m guessing that the overnight shift only has a physician on call, rather than one in the ER at all times…I mean, the few times I’ve been there during the day it didn’t even seem like there was a full-time doctor in the ER, though obviously one would only have to walk downstairs from the medical floor.