LAKELAND, Fla. (WFLA) — Within minutes of sitting outside Lakeland Regional Health’s emergency department, you can see it’s a busy place. In fact, it’s the busiest.
Lakeland Regional Health (formerly Lakeland Regional Medical Center) was ranked number one in the nation for the number of emergency room visits.
Eleven hospitals were ranked for having the most annual emergency room visits during 2016, according to Becker’s Hospital Review.
The totals represent the number of emergency room visits that were tallied at a single facility, rather than total ER visits for a whole health system.
Lakeland Regional Health had 217,208 visits in 2016. Lakeland Health far surpassed the hospital in the number two spot, Parkland Health and Hospital System in Dallas, Texas which had 171,390 visits.
“If you think about a large metropolitan area, there’s typically several large hospitals. With Lakeland, we’re the only hospital in our community, and we offer a very diverse array of services. So, it pulls a lot of volume from our surrounding community,” Lakeland Regional Health Director of Emergency Services April Novotny said.
For some patients, going to an ER is their only option.
“With my situation, I have to come because I don’t have medical insurance. I have to make payments on my visits,” one patient told News Channel 8.
“We do know out of Polk’s population of around 640,000, there’s about 100,000 people that are uninsured, and also 20 percent of our population is 65 and over,” Polk County Department of Health Director Dr. Joy Jackson said.
Polk County also has a shortage of primary care doctors.
“We’re a healthcare provider shortage area for medical, dental, also behavioral health,” Dr. Jackson said.
“Busy emergency departments and access to primary care is a national issue,” Novotny said.
For the hospital, there’s a silver lining. The increasing number of patients challenges them to become more efficient.
“We have hospitals from around the country and internationally coming to see how we provide such high-quality care to such a high volume of patients. On average, a patient is in and out of our department in about two hours and 15 minutes,” Novotny said.
Lakeland Regional Health’s Emergency Department quality improvement efforts earned a 2014 Genesis Cup Award and Florida Hospital Association’s 2014 award for Innovation of the Year in Patient Care.
In 2013, LRH completed a revolutionary two-year transformation and the results set national standards and gained attention from peers around the globe. Project goals were to:
· Significantly improve patient turnaround times
· Reduce patient boarding time while awaiting an inpatient bed assignment
· Decrease the number of patients leaving before being treated
· Accommodate future growth in patient visits
Today:
· Patients are seen by a doctor within an average of 17 minutes after arrival, faster than the national average
· Patients assigned to an inpatient bed in less than 10 minutes on average
· Fewer than 0.3% patients leave without treatmentSee the complete rankings here.
