What are emergency room wait times in Vermont? Here's what different groups report.
The anecdotal evidence on wait times in the ER − also known as the ED, or Emergency Department − at the University of Vermont Medical Center usually involves stories of hours spent in an uncomfortable chair before being seen by a doctor or other medical professional.
The story is the same across New England, and across the country. Various organizations regularly crank out lists of ER wait times by state. Becker's Hospital Review, a publication targeted at hospital executives, recently published a list of ER wait times that ranked Vermont 13th best in the country at an average wait time of 130 minutes.
Becker's defines wait time as the time patients spend in the ER before leaving. The research examined data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, a federal agency, from Jan. 7, 2020, to March 31, 2021.
Vermont did better in the Becker's ranking than any of the surrounding states:
Maine − 147 minutes
New Hampshire − 154 minutes
Connecticut − 166 minutes
New York − 184 minutes
Rhode Island − 185 minutes
Massachusetts − 189 minutes
Florida attorneys paint a different picture of wait times in Vermont emergency rooms
Another group, InjuredInFlorida.com, a team of personal injury attorneys in Florida, came out with a list of their own that ranked Vermont 10th worst in the nation for ER wait times, with patients spending an average of 178 minutes in the ER before leaving.
That's 48 minutes longer, on average, than Becker's came up with, and both organizations examined the same data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to determine their lists, so that tells you something about the shortcomings of this research.
On the InjuredInFlorida.com list, five surrounding states did worse than Vermont, with Rhode Island coming in as second worst in the nation to Maryland in the Number 1 spot:
Rhode Island − 214 minutes
Massachusetts − 213 minutes
New York − 201 minutes
New Jersey − 191 minutes
Connecticut − 182 minutes
University of Vermont Health Network gives a more nuanced answer on ER wait times
So what did the University of Vermont Medical Center itself have to say about ER wait times? It's quite different than what either Becker's or the Florida personal injury attorneys said.
First, UVMMC defines ER wait times as the amount of time it takes from when you arrive in the emergency room until you're seen by a doctor. Second, UVMMC focuses on median wait times rather than the average wait times that both Becker's and InjuredInFlorida.com use.
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Average is arrived at by dividing all the wait times by the number of patients. Median is the wait time exactly in the middle of all the wait times − so half the patients have a wait time shorter than the median, and half the patients have a wait time longer than the median.
Annie Mackin, chief media relations officer for the University of Vermont Health Network, began by saying that anyone who comes to the ER with severe or life-threatening conditions is seen immediately, or within minutes of arrival.
For anyone else, the median wait time at the UVMMC ER is just under 31 minutes, according to Mackin. Across the UVM Health Network, the median wait time for the ER is just under 25 minutes.
The UVM Health Network includes UVM Medical Center in Burlington, Central Vermont Medical Center in Berlin, and Porter Medical Center in Middlebury, plus three hospitals in upstate New York.
"The time a patient waits in the ED is really variable and depends on a complex series of factors that include things like flow through the hospital (i.e. what time patients being discharged from the hospital leave their bed, so the room can be cleaned and a new patient brought in); acuity and volume of other ED patients; number of mental health patients waiting in the ED for an inpatient bed somewhere in the state; a large number of patients coming in to the ED at one time; and other factors," Mackin said.
There are more, sicker people heading for the ER in Vermont
In a follow-up email, Mackin emphasized that both volume and acuity of patients in the ER have "increased markedly" over the past few years.
"So there are more people coming into the ED for care, and those people are sicker than they used to be," she said.
In the pre-dawn hours, the wait in the ER at the University of Vermont Medical Center has been "basically zero minutes," according to Mackin. During prime time, the evening hours between 5-8 p.m., the wait can be as long as several hours before you see a doctor.
The UVMMC emergency room is consistently seeing more than 200 patients daily, and on some days more than 220, which is 10-20% higher than previous years. That said, most of the patients are "in the right place for the type of care they need, and we want them to come in," Mackin said.
"The ED team of nurses, doctors and techs works very hard 24 hours a day to get everyone seen as fast as possible," she said.
The Green Mountain Care Board (GMCB), which oversees every aspect of health care in Vermont, is focused on access to care as one of the most important of its mandates, which includes wait times. In a statement emailed to the Burlington Free Press, Board Chair Owen Foster addressed all wait times, not just those for the ER.
"GMCB is deeply concerned about the access challenges faced by Vermonters," Foster wrote. "Wait times for specialty care and imaging services are too long and, in some communities, it is difficult to find a primary care provider willing to accept new patients: those on Medicaid may face additional access challenges. Although the GMCB does not regulate all providers, we recently strengthened the requirement that hospitals measure and report wait times."
Contact Dan D’Ambrosio at 660-1841 or ddambrosi@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @DanDambrosioVT. This coverage is only possible with support from our readers.
This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: ER wait times in Vermont, at UVM Medical Center, and in New England
