BEL AIR, Md. — The emergency rooms in Aberdeen and Bel Air are crowded these days, even for what's usually a busy time of year.
"Just waiting for like two hours over there," James Roark recalled about a recent trip to the ER. "I’m not really in super good health. I have health issues and stuff so I’ve been over there several times to this one [in Aberdeen]. Sometimes I just drive all the way down to Bel Air and that’s not a whole lot faster, but they are bigger."
"I would say that we've seen about a 20-30% increase in our wait times," Dr. Fermin Barrueto, Senior Vice President/Chief Clinical Officer at University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health.
The Harford County Director of Emergency Services put out a PSA on Thursday, encouraging people to call their primary care doctor or go to urgent care before rushing to the ER unless their symptoms are severe.
ER triage protocols call for the most critical cases to be treated first.
Of course, primary care physicians are busy right now too, and might not have appointments available for weeks.
"That’s absolutely true; that’s probably true even when it’s not a winter season," Dr. Barrueto said. "But urgent care is definitely another safe place to go. Trust your gut. If you’re feeling lightheaded, if things just don’t feel right, then of course the emergency department is here for you."
Dr. Barrueto is seeing a lot of patients with respiratory and gastrointestinal viruses - specifically RSV, and norovirus.
"I'd say right now we're still on the upswing," Dr. Barrueto said. "That's why the public service announcements are going out. Usually, we start seeing improvements as we get into the February month - it can't come soon enough for us all, I'm sure. but the safe thing to say right now is what we’re seeing as far as measurements, all the viruses seem to be more on the upswing, maybe RSV has come down a little bit. That’s the only one I’ve seen kind of temper, or not necessarily go in a straight curve up."
In Aberdeen, Andrea Hancock's family member recently went to the ER to be treated for RSV.
"It was quite a wait, quite a wait. I think like, three or four hours just to wait to be seen and then had to stay longer to figure out what was going on," Hancock told WMAR-2 News.
A crowded emergency room can also be an easy place to pick up a sickness, which does keep some people from going there until it's really necessary.
"Usually if I go to the emergency room, I'll take one of those masks to put on, because I know other people are gonna be sick, and I know for sure, with my health issues, I don't need to pick up something worse," Roark said. "Leave the hospital, emergency room, and stuff like that for people who are really critically sick."
"I would have a couple of days of sickness, like coming from various orifices to go and put myself in danger, especially with all that's going on now, so praying that doesn't happen," Hancock said.
Some responded to the county's PSA on social media blaming the influx on last year's closure of Harford Memorial Hospital in Havre de Grace.
With that closure, came the opening of the Aberdeen hospital, and an expansion of the Bel Air hospital.
"You'd expect that kind of comment. The important thing to understand is, Aberdeen emergency department is actually seeing just as many emergency department patients as Harford Memorial has been," Dr. Barrueto told WMAR-2 News. "With regards to overall bed capacity, which is what I think people are referring to for Harford Memorial, we did get additional beds down here, but we're simply overwhelming our system right now, and managing through that."
Making it tougher, is the fact that the hospital employees aren't immune to catching these illnesses. So a lot of days, they're short-staffed.
"That for us, I would say, has probably been one of the biggest challenges," Dr. Barrueto said.
