GRAND RAPIDS, MI — Spectrum Health’s emergency rooms are packed, and the Grand Rapids-based health system is encouraging residents experiencing non-critical health problems to visit an urgent care center or primary care provider before coming to the emergency room.
“We’re asking patients to more deliberately think about seeking emergency care and also more deliberately evaluate the choices that are available in the community such as their primary care doctor, urgent care, and virtual options before they come to the emergency department,” said Dr. Erica Michiels, associate medical director of the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital emergency department.
Michiels spoke to the media about the rise in emergency room visits during an afternoon press conference on Friday, Sept. 24.
She and others said the increase is the result of numerous factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic. The increase has been happening month over month since January. In August, emergency room visits hit pre-pandemic levels.
“We’re seeing viruses surging now that we generally only see in the wintertime around Christmas, and we’re seeing all our summer viruses surging now too,” Michiels said. “So, we really have sort of layers of viral surge that’s happening right now.”
Other contributors include the typical health emergencies, such as broken bones, that send patients to the emergency room in the summer.
Typically, the children’s hospital would see about 160 patients a day. But that’s now sometimes as high as 240 visitors a day. That means patients who come to the emergency room with non-critical conditions may now face wait times that are “significantly longer” than usual, Michiels said.
Typically, wait times at the children’s hospital were 10 minutes or less.
Despite the increase, doctors were careful to point out that patients suffering from strokes, chest pain, moderate asthmas flare ups, fractures, and difficulty breathing should still come to the emergency room.
“We are stretched thin — our buffers are smaller than they have been in the past,” said Dr. Nicholas Kuhl, medical director of adult emergency medicine at Spectrum Health Butterworth. “But they are still there and we are not full.”
Officials said residents should not come to the emergency room to get a COVID-19 test. Other conditions such as mild asthma, a rash, sore throat and cough can wait for urgent care or a virtual or in-person visit with a primary care doctor.
Kuhl said wait time at Spectrum Butterworth’s emergency room are now up from an average of 10 minutes to an average of 20 minutes.
“But there are times when it can be much higher than that during surge and patients might have to be in our waiting room for even a couple hours rarely,” he said.
While wait times are up, so is the percentage of patients “that fit the highest complexity or even a critical care level.” Such patients are up “20% these 12 months versus the year prior,” Kuhl said.
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