JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Some emergency room patients wait almost an hour before seeing a doctor.
Action News investigated wait times at local emergency rooms and found one local hospital with an average wait that's twice the Florida and national average.
Jacksonville has a lot of hospitals with a dozen local emergency rooms treat thousands of families every day.
We searched the database of information from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and found, the average ER wait time for Florida is 23 minutes, one minute faster than the national average.
But across our area, we found only two hospitals with faster times. Memorial Hospital's ER average wait is 18 minutes, and Orange Park Medical Center has the shortest average wait at just 14 minutes.
Latest News Headlines from Action News
So where will you spend the most time waiting to see an emergency room doctor?
The numbers show, it's UF Health Jacksonville, with an average wait time of 55 minutes.
"It's where the sickest people and most critical in the city come," said Dr. Andy Godwin, chair of the department of emergency medicine at UF Health.
UF Health is Jacksonville's only Trauma One center. That means our area's most seriously ill or critically injured go there. The hospital's ER sees as many 300 patients every day, more than any other local ER.
"Our patient population is sicker than most and we're very adept at serving the critically ill," Godwin said.
Clocking in with the second longest ER wait time is St. Vincent's Medical Center, where patients wait an average 54 minutes.
Many hospitals have taken to advertising their ER wait times, like Memorial Hospital, which has a billboard up along Interstate 95.
The billboard prompts passersby to text a number for the current wait time. It was a wait of 14 minutes when Action News checked, so we went to check how accurate that number really is. At the ER desk, the staff told us in less than 30 minutes, we could see a provider.
To check where your local hospital ranks, click here.
For Action News on the go, sign up for Action News Mobile & Email alerts
WJAX
