Which State Has The Longest Emergency Room Visit Time?

Emergency room wait times vary significantly across the United States depending on factors such as hospital resources, patient volume, and staffing levels, with some states facing delays that can stretch for more than three hours.

Long stays in the emergency department often point to issues like understaffing or overcrowding, leading to delays in treatment, and often times, worse patient health outcomes.

This map, via Visual Capitalist’s Kayla Zhu,visualizes the average time patients spend in the emergency department before leaving, by U.S. state and territory.

Data comes from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and is updated as of Oct. 30, 2024.

This data reflects the average time patients spend at the emergency department, from the time they arrive to the time they leave, and excludes those who died in the emergency department, left without the approval of a licensed provider, or lacked documented discharge destinations.

Which State Has the Longest Emergency Room Visit Time?

Below, we show the average time patients spent in the emergency room before leaving, by state.

Rank
State/Territory
Average time patients spent in the emergency room before leaving
1
District of Columbia
5 hrs 14 min
2
Puerto Rico
4 hrs 41 min
3
Maryland
4 hrs 10 min
4
Rhode Island
3 hrs 38 min
5
Massachusetts
3 hrs 36 min
6
Delaware
3 hrs 31 min
7
New York
3 hrs 24 min
8
North Carolina
3 hrs 11 min
9
New Jersey
3 hrs 11 min
10
Connecticut
3 hrs 9 min
11
California
3 hrs 6 min
12
Pennsylvania
3 hrs 3 min
13
Vermont
2 hrs 59 min
14
Illinois
2 hrs 55 min
15
Maine
2 hrs 55 min
16
Arizona
2 hrs 50 min
17
Virginia
2 hrs 46 min
18
Michigan
2 hrs 45 min
19
New Hampshire
2 hrs 45 min
20
South Carolina
2 hrs 43 min
21
New Mexico
2 hrs 42 min
22
Florida
2 hrs 41 min
23
Georgia
2 hrs 40 min
24
Tennessee
2 hrs 38 min
25
Oregon
2 hrs 37 min
26
Washington
2 hrs 37 min
27
Ohio
2 hrs 36 min
28
Kentucky
2 hrs 35 min
29
Missouri
2 hrs 35 min
30
Alabama
2 hrs 26 min
31
Texas
2 hrs 26 min
32
West Virginia
2 hrs 25 min
33
Nevada
2 hrs 24 min
34
Idaho
2 hrs 22 min
35
Alaska
2 hrs 20 min
36
Wisconsin
2 hrs 18 min
37
Colorado
2 hrs 15 min
38
Wyoming
2 hrs 15 min
39
Arkansas
2 hrs 13 min
40
Louisiana
2 hrs 12 min
41
Utah
2 hrs 12 min
42
Mississippi
2 hrs 7 min
43
Montana
2 hrs 7 min
44
Minnesota
2 hrs 6 min
45
Indiana
2 hrs 5 min
46
Kansas
2 hrs 1 min
47
Oklahoma
2 hrs
48
Iowa
1 hr 59 min
49
Hawaii
1 hr 57 min
50
Nebraska
1 hr 54 min
51
South Dakota
1 hr 53 min
52
North Dakota
1 hr 50 min

The median emergency room visit time in 2024 in the U.S. was 2 hours and 42 minutes. Twenty states had average emergency room visit times higher than the national average.

Washington, D.C. residents had the longest average emergency department visit times at 5 hours and 14 minutes, followed by Puerto Rico at 4 hours and 41 minutes.

These extended wait times in D.C. and Puerto Rico are likely due to a combination of high population density, limited healthcare resources, and potentially higher rates of uninsured patients seeking emergency care.

Rural and less populated states like North Dakota (1 hour 50 minutes), South Dakota (1 hour 53 minutes), and Nebraska (1 hour 54 minutes) had the shortest emergency room times, suggesting that lower patient loads and less crowded facilities contribute to faster processing.

Long emergency department waits worsen patient health, raise healthcare costs, and strain hospital resources, increasing risks of mortality and compromised care.

A University of South Caroline study found that prolonging the wait of a patient who arrives with a serious condition by 10 minutes will increase the hospital’s cost to care for the patient by an average of 6%.

To learn more about the health care landscape in the U.S., check out this graphic that visualizes the largest health insurance company in each U.S. state.