The average visit to an emergency department in Oregon last fall took about five hours and 12 minutes, continuing a downward trend underway since 2022.
That’s according to the Oregon Health Authority’s new online tool that provides quarterly insights on what happens inside the state’s hospitals and emergency departments — from how long patients stay and what insurance coverage they have to where they go after being discharged.
Typical ER visit durations peaked in 2022, when average visits reached nearly six hours. Meanwhile, the average hospital stay in the state was just over 5 days.
The data shows that the average length of an ER visit can vary dramatically from hospital to hospital.
In the 12 months leading up to September 2024, more than half of hospitals in the state reported average ER stays under five hours. But Legacy’s Unity Center for Behavioral Health in Portland, which takes in patients with mental health crises, reported average ER visits stretching beyond 26 hours during this time period.
Inpatient hospital stays, meanwhile, hovered in the year leading up to September 2024 at 4.9 days. That’s down slightly from about 5.4 over the same time in 2022, according to the data.
State health officials say the dashboard is designed to equip communities and leaders in the health industry and government with the information to tackle critical major issues like emergency department crowding, discharge delays, workforce capacity, and the growing need for behavioral health services.
Emergency rooms have been slammed with patients since the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to a mix of delayed care, an aging population and hospital understaffing.
Inpatient stays have been longer, too, in part because rehabilitation facilities — where people might otherwise be discharged to convalesce — have also been fully booked.
The new numbers suggest hospitals have made measurable progress in tackling those issues.
Hospital stays also vary dramatically, data from the year ending September 2024 shows. Three hospitals saw average stays of more than 10 days, including Salem Health’s West Valley Hospital in Dallas, which reported average stays up to 16 days.
The state’s new dashboard also shows patients experiencing homelessness stayed in hospitals longer than those with housing — almost three days longer in the third quarter of 2024.
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