AUGUSTA — MaineGeneral Medical Center operates two 24/7 emergency departments – one at the Alfond Center for Health in Augusta and the other at Thayer Center for Health in Waterville.
In the year before COVID-19, 55,000 people received care at MaineGeneral’s emergency departmeny; roughly two-thirds of those in Augusta and one-third in Waterville.
A common concern patients have about the emergency department is how long they will be in the waiting room before they can see medical staff.
Long waits in emergency are a national issue, and MaineGeneral’s average wait times are similar to those across the nation.
We wanted to give you information before you need emergency care to understand wait times.
We sat down with leadership of the emergency department, Dr. Laurel Parker, medical director, and Janelynn Deprey, RN, ED director, as well as Jennifer Riggs, MaineGeneral chief nursing officer.
First, it is important that the emergency department is used appropriately. Patients often come to the ED when they may have been able to see their own doctor or receive care at MaineGeneral Express Care. Leaving the department to true emergency care would help decrease wait times for everyone.
“Right now we have someone in waiting room who has had leg pain for two months; another who has hip pain without a fall,” Parker said. “They may have been able to get into their primary care provider or could have gone to MaineGeneral Express Care. Ongoing health issues are really best addressed by a patient’s PCP. The ED is best for urgent health care needs.”
Next, it is important to know that when a person gets seen, or placed in a room, often depends on severity of symptoms. “Generally, the sickest patient gets seen first,” Parker said. “It’s not first-come, first-served.”
Deprey added that it’s sometimes not clear to other patients in the waiting room how urgent another person’s concerns are. “You can’t always tell by someone’s outward appearance how sick they are or what their needs are,” she said. “There are many factors we take into account.”
You also may not see critical patients who come to the emergency department by ambulance, as they use a separate entrance.
When you arrive in the ED, you will be seen quickly by a triage nurse who can assess your complaint and start your evaluation and care from the waiting room. While you are waiting, needed tests can be run and then are available when you are seen by a medical staff member.
Patients who require emergency care coming in sicker, stressing a system of care where more patients need to be admitted, and beds are in short supply, Parker said.
COVID-19 is only part of the explanation.
Riggs agreed that, overall, beds statewide are difficult to find. This is because of the complicated factors of more and sicker patients, including behavioral health patients, and fewer long-term care beds in the state. This leads to having to room medical patients in the emergency department, leaving fewer rooms available for patients arriving at the ED.
The result, she said, is that patients stay in the ED longer. There are delays getting patients admitted to an inpatient wing of the hospital, delays in finding behavioral health placement and difficulty transferring from the hospital to long-term care.
Nursing homes and long-term care facilities have the same lack of resources. “These facilities have staffing and bed shortages, so we are having to keep patients who would be best-placed in those facilities, and that compounds our own bed shortage,” Riggs said.
Parker and Deprey remind the community the emergency department is here to provide the very best health care and that no one should avoid going to the ED when they need their services.
“We are all doing our best to get everyone the care and attention they need, as quickly as we can,” Deprey said.
