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How lengthy does it take to go from the emergency room to a hospital mattress on the metropolis’s public hospitals?
It relies on the place you go searching for assist.
At Kings County Hospital Heart in East Flatbush, sufferers waited a median of 27 hours. At Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, the wait was practically 24 hours from January by means of Might, based on information obtained by The Metropolis Reporter.
Sufferers fared higher at Bellevue in Manhattan, the place the typical wait was practically 10 hours, adopted by Harlem Hospital at 8.9 hours and Metropolitan Hospital in East Harlem at 6.4 hours.
Total, it has taken sufferers a median of 12.8 hours to switch from the emergency room to a hospital mattress from 2022 till 2025 at medical facilities owned by NYC Well being + Hospitals, based on information obtained by means of a Freedom of Data request.
It ought to take now not than 4 hours from the choice to confess a affected person to their switch to an inpatient mattress, with the overall time within the ER not exceeding eight hours, based on the brand new Emergency Care Entry and Timeliness normal established by the federal Facilities for Medicare & Medicaid Companies.
‘Hallway Responsibility’ and ‘Pissed Off’ Sufferers
The day-long delays at some metropolis public hospitals are pushed by a mix of employees shortages, a gradual spike within the variety of sufferers because of the closures of close by hospitals, and a rising variety of sufferers with complicated medical wants, based on consultants.
Brooklyn has misplaced 1,600 hospital beds since 2010 from the closure and consolidation of hospitals and medical facilities, based on an evaluation by the New York State Nurses Affiliation.
At Kings County, the onboarding course of has gotten so acute that some ER employees are actually assigned to “hallway responsibility,” caring for sufferers who’re awaiting admission however who now not require emergency consideration, based on two veteran nurses on the hospital.
MORE: Learn The Metropolis Reporter’s NYC well being protection.
Roughly 30% to 40% of the emergency division is often full of sufferers ready to be transferred to a mattress, Harinee Suthakar, a nurse at Kings County, instructed The Metropolis Reporter.
“The ER is such a busy place, they’re surrounded by noise, screens beeping, consistently going off, and lights being so shiny,” she mentioned. “It’s a really difficult circumstance for a affected person to be in.”
One other nurse, who spoke on situation of anonymity, added: “Sufferers are actually pissed off as a result of they’re nonetheless ready.”
On the 639-bed medical facility, the typical look ahead to a mattress upstairs was 18.6 hours in 2022; 26.7 hours in 2023; 28.9 hours in 2024; 20 hours in 2025; and 27.3 hours from January by means of Might of this 12 months, based on the information.
Consultants say the in depth wait instances at Kings County are a part of a nationwide onboarding disaster pushed by a scarcity of hospital beds and an overreliance on ERs for routine care by sufferers with out personal medical health insurance.
A Surge in 2026 Flu Circumstances
“I don’t blame anyone for listening to these numbers and pondering, ‘Wow, what’s going on?’” Alexander Janke, a medical assistant professor of emergency drugs on the College of Michigan Medical College, instructed The Metropolis Reporter.
“However I need you to know that should you come to many hospitals in the USA proper now, you possibly can anticipate to attend 27 hours for a mattress to open up upstairs,” he added. “That’s, actually, the established order that we discover ourselves in.”
Adam Shrier, a NYC Well being + Hospital spokesperson, urged The Metropolis Reporter to not spotlight the most recent information from January to Might at Kings County as a result of it consists of “the peak of respiratory virus season,” which creates a “surge in ED quantity yearly,” a reference to the hospital’s emergency division.
“We’re blissful to reply your questions, however they need to not use this comparability,” he mentioned.
The winter of 2025-26 noticed a extreme flu surge, with over 146,000 lab-confirmed instances and record-high hospitalizations throughout the state, Shrier mentioned. Over half of town’s reported instances affected youngsters youthful than 18.
Amid the rise in onboarding instances at a number of medical facilities, town’s public hospital system noticed enhancements in different emergency division classes.
The “Left With out Being Seen” charges of sufferers who abandon the emergency room earlier than seeing a health care provider decreased from 4% to five% of sufferers to 2% to three%, Shrier famous. That signifies the system has improved its “front-end ED processes and its medical doctors are seeing sufferers quicker,” he added.
Moreover, NYC H+H has seen systemwide enhancements in door-to-provider metrics, the information exhibits. The share of sufferers seen in underneath 29 minutes rose from 42.0% in 2022 to 49.4% to date this 12 months, whereas ready instances for emergency care longer than 89 minutes fell from 20% to fifteen%.
A ‘Public Well being Disaster’?
Nonetheless, Dr. Frances Quee, president of the Medical doctors Council SEIU, the union that represents physicians within the metropolis’s public hospital system, mentioned the lack to put sufferers in beds inside an inexpensive timeframe exhibits a bigger drawback.
“When practically one in 5 emergency visits throughout H+H now lasts 9 or extra hours, we now have moved properly previous the edge of an inconvenience and into the territory of a public well being disaster,” Quee mentioned.
She described “a boarding disaster pushed by a scarcity of inpatient beds,” wherein sufferers are held within the ER “as a result of there may be merely nowhere to place them.”
Kings County Hospital has seen a spike in ER sufferers over the previous a number of years, from 92,450 in 2022, to 99,200 in 2023, to over 102,000 in 2024, based on H+H information.
That’s a much bigger affected person load than earlier than and even through the COVID-19 pandemic.
One Million Sufferers
H+H officers blamed the citywide affected person improve on the shuttering of different hospitals over the previous decade, together with Beth Israel Medical Heart on Union Sq. in 2025; Lengthy Island School Hospital in Cobble Hill in 2014; Interfaith Medical Heart in Bedford-Stuyvesant in 2013; and St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village in 2010.
Since 2010, Brooklyn has misplaced greater than 1,600 hospital beds, with the bulk coming from Lengthy Island School, Lutheran Medical Heart in Sundown Park and Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Heart in East Flatbush, based on the nurses union.
An estimated a million New Yorkers get medical care by means of town’s public hospital system, the biggest within the U.S.
Many should not have any personal insurance coverage and depend on hospitals like Kings County and Elmhurst for routine care. The town hospital system accepts sufferers no matter their immigration standing or their skill to pay.
Shrier, the HHC spokesperson, mentioned delays for beds at some main hospitals aren’t associated to a scarcity of employees, noting that systemwide, the emergency division doctor emptiness charge is simply 4.2%.
The Kings County emergency division is totally staffed with medical doctors and nurses. Of the 229 budgeted registered nurse positions, solely three are vacant, he mentioned.
Over the previous 4 years, Kings County has added roughly 10 full-time doctor positions to maximise employees in its major statement unit, based on Shrier, and roughly 60 further nurses have been employed to cope with the spike in sufferers. Staffing at Elmhurst — which has a 70-bed ER and 545 inpatient beds — is equally strong, he added.
Greatest Enhance at Woodhull
However one nationwide knowledgeable, who declined to debate particular hospitals, mentioned lengthy onboarding instances point out a significant lack of sources — and capability.
“Boarding isn’t an ED drawback, it’s a hospital drawback as a result of there’s a hospital-wide capability situation that’s pushed by a wide range of issues,” Dustin Bass, president of the Emergency Nurses Affiliation, instructed The Metropolis Reporter.
When a hospital is swamped and under-resourced, “the ED, sadly, finally ends up being the one which has to cope with that drawback,” he mentioned.
H+H officers mentioned the lengthy boarding instances don’t give the complete image.
At Kings County, door-to-doctor instances have improved 19% since 2022 and 26% since 2024, falling from a median of 91.5 minutes in 2024 to 68 minutes in 2025 and 2026, based on H+H.
How does the general public system’s common boarding time examine with different New York hospitals, and with the remainder of the nation?
Throughout New York Metropolis’s personal and public hospitals, the mixed common wait time for hospital admission after an emergency room go to is 3 hours and 27 minutes, based on information from the U.S. Facilities for Medicaid and Medicare Companies. Against this, in Houston the typical wait time is roughly 2 hours and 32 minutes. Los Angeles residents wait about 3 hours and 29 minutes, whereas Chicago residents wait about 3 hours and 21 minutes.
Supporters of town public hospital system be aware that the New York Metropolis inhabitants dwarfs different large metropolitan areas.
Nonetheless, the wait time throughout the 11 city-managed hospitals was nearly 14 hours between January and Might, based on the information. (NYC Well being + Hospitals omitted information for North Central Bronx Hospital from its response to The Metropolis Reporter’s public data request.)
The onboarding wait instances have exceeded the nationwide normal for the previous 5 years.
Sufferers who go to Kings County Hospital’s emergency room, for instance, waited a median of 23.5 hours from the ER to a mattress in an everyday unit from 2022 by means of 2025, the information present. At Elmhurst, they waited roughly 18.8 hours over that very same interval, the figures present.
These public hospitals are the worst however removed from an outlier.
Of the ten hospitals for which information was supplied, the largest improve occurred at Woodhull Medical Heart in Bushwick, the place wait instances have jumped by 12 hours since 2022, based on an evaluation by The Metropolis Reporter. That 12 months, Woodhull reported a median wait time of 10 hours, whereas 2026 numbers present roughly 22 hours.
Equally, Elmhurst Hospital Heart noticed an nearly 7-hour wait time bounce since 2022.
Elmhurst’s grownup emergency division has been dealing with greater than 90,000 visits a 12 months since 2023. That’s means larger than the roughly 70,000 to 72,000 visits it was designed to deal with within the early 2000s, based on H+H.
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Sufferers typically obtain some remedy whereas they wait within the ER, together with assessments equivalent to CT scans and different diagnostic work.
However the size of the look ahead to an inpatient mattress nonetheless issues, consultants defined.
Lengthy ER waits can result in missed medicines and delays in additional complete remedy, mentioned Janke and different medical consultants. “It’s possible you’ll end up asking 5 or 10 instances for some assist getting as much as go to the toilet,” Janke mentioned.
Emergency and inpatient care “work on two completely different clocks,” Janke mentioned. Within the ER, medical doctors are centered on figuring out and treating doubtlessly critical issues that want fast consideration.
There’s seemingly extra congestion to return.
‘Getting Ridiculous’
In July, greater than 200,000 New York Metropolis residents misplaced their medical health insurance following the Trump administration’s cuts to the state Important Plan. The mass lack of well being protection might ship extra New Yorkers to the emergency room — and potential hospital admission — as they delay main and preventive care, consultants mentioned.
“The ready within the hospital is getting ridiculous,” Metropolis Councilmember Mercedes Narcisse (D-Brooklyn), a former nurse at Elmhurst Hospital Heart who chairs the committee on hospitals, instructed The Metropolis Reporter. “Medicaid is the state, but when the federal authorities doesn’t give the cash, then we’re not getting something even within the metropolis. The federal authorities has minimize $8 billion; that’s a giant minimize we’re speaking about from our construction.”
The shortage of mattress house is all too actual for Kai G., who was stabbed within the leg throughout a combat close to Prospect Park in July. The 28-year-old additionally broke his proper hand and suffered scrapes on his legs and arms whereas leaping a fence as he fled the melee.
Kai instructed The Metropolis Reporter he walked for half-hour to Kings County’s emergency room with a bleeding leg. Inside hours, nurses have been checking his important indicators and medical doctors had carried out surgical procedure on his hand.
However the subsequent morning, he mentioned, medical doctors walked into his room with discharge papers.
“They instructed me I seemed like I used to be properly sufficient to depart, however I couldn’t stroll,” Kai instructed The Metropolis Reporter. “They discharged me early they usually simply left me on the road. It was f–king ridiculous.”
After Kai begged employees to let him keep, he mentioned the hospital gave him a cane and organized a taxi to Bellevue Hospital Heart in Manhattan, the place he was admitted.
“I instructed them, ‘To start with I can’t stroll; I would like restoration. Are y’all going to assist me?’” Kai mentioned. “They’re like, ‘No, simply come again to rewrap this arm.’ They dealt with the surgical procedure good, but it surely was tousled.”
