“After an urgent care center was unable to treat my friend for internal bleeding, and urged us to call an ambulance for transport to the hospital, we decided instead, to drive to the Leesburg Hospital ER,” recounts Village of Pennecamp resident Elizabeth Brown about her visit on Nov. 29. “We could have gone to The Villages’ Hospital, but I had heard numerous complaints about the long delays.
“We arrived at 1 p.m. The waiting room was crowded — perhaps 25 or more people along with another 25 of their family or friends. Some had been there since 9 a.m. At 3:30. While we were still sitting in the waiting room, a staff member drew blood and took some samples,” Brown said.
Her story is all-too-typical.
If you need hospital emergency room intervention anywhere in Florida – expect an average wait time of 16 minutes before being seen by a physician. But, if you have the same medical necessity at The Villages Regional Hospital (TVRH) be prepared to wait an average of 58 minutes. At its sister facility operated by the Central Florida Health Alliance (CFHA) Leesburg Regional Hospital, ER patients fare about the same.
These wait times are required to be reported by every hospital to the federal government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and are publicly available.
The challenges to TVRH have been particularly daunting as the hospital has tried to meet The Villages’ rapidly booming population.
Since opening in 2002, the Emergency Department has grown from a 12-bed unit to now 50 beds, according to Don Henderson, president and CEO of CFHA, and Michael Pittman, vice president/chief clinical officer/site administrator of TVRH, in a statement exclusively prepared for the Village-News.com.
“In 2017, a number of operational improvements were made including an increase in the number of medical providers and nursing staff members,” continued Henderson. “Part of this process has been the creation of a special Fast Track area to care for patients who are ambulatory and can be seen and sent home relatively quickly after their provider visit. Walk-ins’ “should be registered and seen by the nurse practitioner in the triage area within 30 minutes,”
During fiscal year, 38,485 patients sought emergency care at TVRH according to Frank Faust, administrative director of marketing for CFHA. This was some 4,000 less than previous years as potential ER patients were diverted to the hospital’s alternative urgent care programs.
However, the reality of patients’ ER experiences does not yet equate to the expectations of the hospital’s administration. TVRH’s own website, on Dec. 13 at 8:22 a.m. reported a “real-time” wait time of 64 minutes.
The delays, as it did for Ms. Brown at Leesburg, only worsens as you wait for the care team’s decision process to determine whether to “admit or not-to-admit.”
“Finally, at 6 p.m., we were directed to the holding bed area to wait for a bed ‘upstairs.’ But, there were no beds available in the bed waiting area so we continued to sit,” Brown continued.
“By 8:30, seven-and-a-half hours later, I was looking for someplace to buy some food. Everything was closed. The vending machines were sold out. At 9 p.m., we were told to come back early the next morning, and that ‘maybe in eight hours, you’ll get a bed.’ We left, tired and hungry, deciding to go to his family physician in the morning.”
The average time for the Villages’ professional staff to conduct, evaluate the medical tests, such as X-rays and lab tests, and then determine whether to send you home or admit you takes three hours and 50 minutes. Their decision process compares to a statewide average of two hours and 26 minutes.
“Our goal is to keep patients and family members informed by making communication rounds at least once every hour,” Henderson and Pittman continued. “Based on (this) review, patients may be assigned to either a ‘regular’ admission status or to an ‘observation’ status. Approximately, two-thirds of patients admitted fall into the ‘regular’ category. Patient rooms should be ready for occupancy within two hours.
However, public records indicate that if admission is the appropriate option; expect to wait a total of six hours and 18 minutes to be assigned to a bed on a nursing unit in The Villages hospital. The average admission delay at other Florida hospitals is four hours and 59 minutes.
Renovations and greater emphasis on a more efficient triage and admission process “are some of the enhancements to patient care that have recently been implemented to improve the patient’s experience,” added Henderson and Pittman.
However, at October’s VHA meeting, Pittman “acknowledged that improvements are needed and that the goal for the emergency room staff is a wait of less than 15 minutes from the time a patient is registered.”
In the interim, the preponderance of extremely critical reviews, posted on numerous social media criticizing the hospitals’ wait times, continue to considerably out-weigh those offering praise. An unreliable indicator, perhaps, but one that reflects the public’s outrage and frustration:
“Worst emergency service we have ever experienced. Neighbor with a terrible headache that felt like a stroke waited 7 hours (at the Villages Hospital ER) before anyone saw her. They finally took an MRI and saw something they couldn’t handle and shipped her off to Ocala where a scan found an embolism.
“No one seems to care or have any urgency at the emergency room in this hospital
Living in the Villages we pray every day we don’t need emergency care ( stroke, heart, lungs, etc.)
“Lots of nice things here but hospital management is not one of them” (posted on YELP 11/5/17)
Inevitably, residents of The Villages and nearby towns will rely on their community hospitals’ ERs for prompt medical care, compassion and calming reassurance. In the triage areas, they first desperately wait for their names to be called. And wait. And wait. And wait.
