Just because you call an ambulance in Montgomery County, Maryland, that doesn’t mean you’ll skip the lobby wait in the emergency room.
Maryland’s ER wait times — the time spent in the emergency room before being admitted to the hospital or being sent home — are the longest in the country: an average of 376 minutes, in the latest data, from 2017. The national average was 281.
The only hospital in the county that scored above the national average for how long it
took to see a health care professional once a patient arrived at the emergency department was Adventist. However, it was still below average on most other emergency department-related metrics.
Walk-ins aren’t the only people waiting — ambulances are waiting, too. That means emergency responders can’t get back to work answering other calls.