Triad hospitals experiencing long emergency room wait times

When you have a medical emergency you rush to the hospital.

The goal is to get help as soon as possible, but right now, wait times in the emergency department are getting longer and longer. Cone Health said it's because of the surge in COVID-19 positive patients and a staffing shortage.

WFMY News 2 spoke with one woman whose 87-year-old father waited at Moses Cone's emergency room overnight. Betty Wicker live in Charlotte, but her dad lives in Sedalia. She says her father needed to go to the hospital earlier this month. He has a history of strokes and he had another one.

He was waiting in the hospital around 7:00 p.m., but he didn't get treatment until around 3:00 a.m.



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[tabithatroxel]

Yeah this just crazy I was just had to go to the hospital and the waiting time was very long

[Luna-mxfi]

Absolutely disgusting that they keep people waiting for so long. People go to the emergency for a reason but it’s basically like the doctors or nurses don’t care. Or they simply don’t understand that. Or it’s just that they don’t have the ability to help all the people that they need to help. This is something that needs to change I felt horrible and felt like I might die and they still had me waiting. A screaming kid who was clearly in a lot of pain also had to wait for hours. They took in others right away though and it basically was bothering other patients who were waiting. I understand some people are in worse conditions but they should at least try to make the wait time not so long it’s just absolutely ridiculous and insane. The American health system is failing the American people big time. I saw a lot of people leave because they realized the emergency department wasn’t going to take their emergency seriously. The emergency department or section of hospital’s needs to either hire more staff or something clearly needs to change soon.