Syracuse, N.Y. — Patients at two of Syracuse’s three hospitals spent some of the longest stretches in emergency rooms in all of New York last year, according to federal data.
Patients at St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center spent a median of 341 minutes in the hospital’s emergency room between April 2021 and March 2022, according to the most recent federal data available. That’s over 5.5 hours.
The time ranked the facility 146 in the state out of 147 hospitals for which data was available.
SUNY Upstate’s University Hospital had a median time spent in ER of 273 minutes, over 4.5 hours, ranking it 137 in the state.
Crouse Hospital fared somewhat better. It tied for 82nd statewide with a median time of 203 minutes, or a bit over three hours.
Patients shared numerous stories of tough wait times in Syracuse’s ERs with syracuse.com for an investigation in February. More than 20,000 people who arrived at Syracuse ERs with a medical emergency last year eventually gave up and left without ever being treated by a doctor or other health provider.
Dr. William Paolo, Upstate’s head of emergency medicine, called the numbers horrific and said it was an indication of a failing system.
Statewide, the hospital with the shortest median time in ER was Cuba Memorial Hospital in Allegany County at 58 minutes. Most of the hospitals with the shortest wait times were located in rural, less populated areas.
Facilities in bigger cities had worse numbers.
St. Peter’s Hospital in Albany had the longest median at 349 minutes. Both St. Peter’s and St. Joseph’s in Syracuse are owned by Trinity Health, one of the nation’s biggest hospital systems.
Trinity announced in June it was consolidating management of St. Joe’s and St. Peter’s to weather the negative financial effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The numbers in the table above reflect the median of the total amount of time patients spent in hospital emergency rooms before leaving. The statistics are compiled by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
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