‘Anybody could have died’: Patients recall waiting 12 hours at Mercy South Hospital ER
Patients tell First Alert 4 they waited 12 hours to be treated at Mercy South Hospital’s emergency room.
By Melanie Johnson
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ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Missouri (KMOV) — Patients tell First Alert 4 they waited 12 hours to be treated at Mercy South Hospital’s emergency room on Tuesday.
“You can’t do this to people,” says patient Sharon Kohler. “I just said, ’I want to go home. Please let me go home.’”
Sharon’s aunt drove her to the hospital after a primary care doctor advised her to go to the ER because of continuous bleeding.
The pair say sitting in the packed waiting room was a nightmare.
“Anybody could have died,” says Sharon’s aunt, Rita Menefee. “I would say 60, maybe 65. The whole room. Everyone was looking for chairs.”
“We do the best we can to get the sickest people seen first and try to get everyone taken care of,” says Mercy Hospital Emergency Room Physician Dr. John Fortney.
Dr. Fortney says longer wait times are a reflection of the hospital worker shortage nationwide.
He advises people to go to urgent care or call their primary doctor before coming to the emergency room.
“Longer wait times across the board, not just the Metro area but nationally, because the shortage of healthcare providers and workers wait times are excessive, unfortunately,” Dr. Fortney says.
“It’s terrible for people to have to deal with this,” says Kohler.
“It was no sympathy for anybody. There was no ‘we will be with you. I’m sorry we are short-staffed,’” Menefee says.
According to Mercy Hospital, the middle of the day and evenings are when hospitals are the busiest.
However, Sharon and her aunt say they will never go to that emergency room again.
“Mercy needs to wake up.”
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