LAKELAND, Fla. — Nobody plans for a trip to the emergency room, but many patients go to Lakeland Regional Health when an emergency happens.
Lakeland Regional Health is the second busiest emergency department in the entire country.
New data from Becker's Hospital Review showed Lakeland Regional Health saw 199,927 emergency department visits last year.
“On average, we go between 500-700 patients per day,” said Dr. Timothy Regan, president of Lakeland Regional Health Medical Center and chief medical officer of Lakeland Regional Health.
That is more patients than hospitals in Atlanta, Los Angeles, and New York City, based on the number of patients coming into a single hospital.
ER physician Dr. Timothy Regan partly attributes this high patient traffic to LRH being the largest trauma center in Polk County and the lack of access to primary care.
“There is a need for primary care physicians within the county, but our social economic status here in Polk County there are patients who just don’t have the ability to afford insurance or don’t have the access to insurance,” Regan said.
Despite the high volume of patients, doctors said it has not impacted wait times.
“Lakeland Regional has spent a lot of resources to make sure we have an efficient emergency department. Our goal is to have patients seen and treated and sent either home or hospitalized, within three hours, about 80% of the time,” Regan said.
To grow the number of physicians in Polk County, LRH launched its first residency program earlier this year. It is accredited to train up to 187 physicians.
“One of the reasons we chose to pursue our Graduate Medical Education program is so we can bring and train new physicians in our community which will hopefully stay in our community afterwards,” said April Novotny, Vice President of Lakeland Regional Health Medical Center.
The construction of Lakeland Regional’s free-standing emergency department is also underway, This will help improve access to healthcare and reduce the travel time for critical care. It will open in South Lakeland in 2024.
