Patients raise concerns about hospital wait times at Eisenhower Health

Several people have reached out to News Channel 3 in the past few months to share their concerns over emergency department wait times at Eisenhower Health in Rancho Mirage.

Some patients have reported waiting up to 8 hours to receive care while they experienced pain.

One of these patients is Sam Zaidins, a longtime Palm Desert High School teacher, who has been spending a lot of time at the doctor's office as of recently.

"It started more than a month ago with swelling in my legs, particularly my left foot, trying to get in to see the doctor, my primary physician was kind of impossible.”

Zaidans relies on Eisenhower Health for life-saving care. He lives with chronic kidney disease- so getting fast medical attention is crucial. However, Zaidins recalls a recent visit to the emergency room that was anything but fast.

“From beginning to end, it was a 7 hour ordeal," said Zaidins. "I waited for a couple of hours before they actually saw me, but it took many many hours for them to do all the things that they said they would do for me.”

Zaidans is not alone in his concern for long emergency room wait times at Eisenhower.

In the past four months, several viewers have been reaching out to News Channel 3 to express their frustrations. One patient wrote to us claiming that, “Yesterday my wife had to wait over eight hours to get called in the back to see a doctor. “ Another patient wrote, ”My name was called after four hours. This was less than the six or more hours I've had to wait since 2020.”

“It’s really important that they come clean with the public, tell them it's going to be a while before they get things back to normal," urged Zaidins.

News Channel 3's Jennifer Franco raised these concerns to Dr. Euthym Kontaxis, the Medical Director at Eisenhower Tennity Emergency Department.

Dr. Kontaxis said excessive wait times at hospital lobbies "is a national problem." He explained that due to increased volumes, Eisenhower's Emergency Department expects to see 95,000-100,000 patients in 2024.

The most recent data from 2022 on Medicare.gov showed that the average (median) time patients spent in the emergency department before leaving from the visit at Eisenhower was 311 minutes, or a little more than 5 hours. The national average is 194 minutes, while the average in California is 212 minutes.

Comparing these statistics to our other local hospitals, patients at Desert Regional Medical Center report an average wait time of 168 minutes, while patients at JFK Memorial Hospital reported waiting 191 minutes, according to Medicare.gov.

Eisenhower says steps are being taken to improve E.R. wait times.

"We work really hard at making sure the sickest patients are placed where they need to be. We have a triage process, so every patient that comes into the Emergency Department is seen by a doctor in less than 20 minutes, on average. A couple of years ago that was a lot longer. It was about 60 minutes. We did a lot of work over the last year and a half to lower our length of stay times, whic lowered by about 90 minutes in the last two years," according to Dr. Kontaxis. He added that their "average length of stay for discharge patients is 277 minutes and about 330 minutes for admitted patients.”

Over the next three months, Kontaxis said Eisenhower will expand its physician and triage area, which will expand bed space and help improve wait times. The hospital also has plans to open 26 inpatient beds and hire more staff.

“I think our nursing hiring has really improved," states Kontaxis. "We used to use a lot of traveling nurses and we had to use contract labor. We started to convert a lot of those over to full time.”

Dr. Kontaxis also mentioned that they're working to better inform patients while they're waiting for care.

Eisenhower Health said that the expansion has already received approval and funding. They think it will help with wait times.

Stay with News Channel 3 for continuing updates on this story.