A Hopedale hospital official likes to believe its state-record low wait times are possible at other, larger facilities.
Consumer advocate group Compare the Market recently reviewed the 2024 performance of 2,095 hospitals across the country, including 149 Illinois hospitals.
One data point was emergency room wait times. The national average was two hours and 42 minutes. The longest in Illinois was over five hours. Peoria Proctor was three hours and two minutes, Carle BroMenn Medical Center in Normal was three hours and 29 minutes, and St. Joseph Medical Center in Bloomington was three hours 38 minutes. The shortest in the entire state was awarded to rural facility Hopedale Medical Center, with an average wait time of only 50 minutes.
“It just affirms what we kind of already know,” Emily Whitson, Hopedale Medical’s chief operating officer, said about the study. “I think our patients, especially our in- [and] outpatients, know that if they come to our ER, they’re going to get in fairly quick.”
Even when Hopedale’s ER bays are full, nobody is waiting for hours like at other facilities, Whitson said.
Dr. James Brown is a co-founder of Emergency Physician Staffing Solutions (EPSS), which helps staff doctors for Hopedale and seven other Central Illinois hospitals. Brown stressed that 50 minutes is an average. He and Whitson usually observe wait times of around 10-15 minutes. Longer waits can occur, which ups the average.
Brown was super excited but not surprised that Hopedale had the shortest waits.
“I’ve worked at a lot of different hospitals, and honestly, it’s that culture of patient service that sets Hopedale aside,” Brown said. “Because they really, really care about their patients, and consequently, that’s why their patients care about their facility, too. They’re like, ‘Oh, my God. I don’t get attention and quality of care like this at other facilities.’”
The study listed Hopedale Medical’s overall patient rating as poor, with no positive patient ratings but some negative.
While the study states these ratings are not necessarily indicative of a hospital’s quality, it lists complaints as poor staff response time to patient aide, nurses and doctors failing to communicate, patients often not getting requested help and occasionally dirty facilities.
The hospital's Google reviews fared much better with 96 ratings averaging at 4.5 stars out of five.
Hopedale has just five treatment beds. Whereas hospitals in bigger communities, like Pekin and Peoria, house 20 to around 55. The lower traffic volume does not guarantee short wait times since the doctor-to-patient ratio is equal to higher capacity hospitals.
'They want to stay in their hospital'
Hopedale patients come from a 20- to 30-mile radius. There is an amazing need for critical access hospitals in rural communities, Brown said.
What he has found extremely rewarding is when those who depend on rural hospitals love the facilities and the providers. It is a relationship that creates a strong sense of community.
“Hopedale itself is an amazing facility sitting out in the middle of a Central Illinois prairie,” Brown said. “Once you’ve gone there, the patients that go there for healthcare, they don’t want to go anywhere else.
“There are times when I have patients come into the emergency department that need some type of tertiary care, and sometimes it’s about all I can do to get them to transfer out of the community. Because they want to stay in their hospital.”
Attracting doctors to rural communities
Brown grew up in Havana and always had a special interest in rural communities and their medicine. Recruiting physicians for smaller population ER hospitals has been a challenge in recent years, with Brown’s pool of physicians shrinking enormously.
Physicians’ training used to lead them to some work in emergency departments, Brown said. Now primary care and family doctors are not necessarily getting ER training.
“So, now what we’re faced with is a shrinking population of emergency physicians,” Brown said. “So, increasing demand, and unfortunately, a lot of them tend to want to practice in places where they have a higher level of acuity, higher populations, [and] consequently, higher pay. That makes it difficult to recruit these providers to smaller communities.”
Another obstacle is the rising costs of medical education. Brown said students used to be able to defer loans and interest rates throughout their training and people were not leaving school with $200,000-$350,000 debts.
This affects who goes into the profession and what specialty they pursue. They may choose higher paying specialties because of their greater debt. This, Brown said, has led to less primary care doctors.
Many rural communities have programs that help doctors with their tuition and fees if they sign onto the rural area.
“Those are big programs,” Brown said, “but you have to have a very organized and progressive rural community to think that far ahead to be able to provide those types of services 10 years down the road. It’s a difficult process.”
Brown has found that most people who train in emergency care hesitate to work in rural areas also because of the lack of support. They do not have specialists — like an orthopedic surgeon or a cardiologist — they can turn to for help.
“They’re used to practicing in settings where all you have to do is pick up the phone and you can get a specialist to come in,” Brown said. “Whereas when we’re in these rural communities, it’s you, and then you have to make the appropriate decisions by yourself.”
Despite hurdles, Hopedale and EPSS successfully recruit qualified physicians and nurses, but those doctors average on the older side. The positive, Brown said, is they are more experienced.
Filling the primary care gap
Another problem with ERs is the influx of people without primary care physicians. Brown said this can occur due to a variety of reasons like lack of insurance or the absence of primary care providers in an area.
An ER then becomes the path of least resistance, Brown said. It can be difficult to get patients plugged into a primary care system for a follow-up visit, and Brown tends to repeatedly see those same patients.
Whitson has only noticed that being an issue when it comes to patients who do not have primary care with Hopedale Medical. Most of their regular patients, who have a regular doctor at Hopedale, know the drill and take the appropriate steps that allow the staff at Hopedale to triage them more efficiently. That means the people who come to urgent care usually are in actual need of it.
The main challenges Whitson has faced and thinks Hopedale will continue to face are the staffing issues Brown and even bigger hospitals struggle with to varying degrees.
What Whitson and Brown love about Hopedale’s efficiency is physicians can spend more time with patients. This loops back and helps optimization, they said, because the doctors know the patients better and can address their needs quicker and more accurately than if they were rapidly cycling people through the door.
“As they line-up, I can pull up a chair and talk with the people and talk a little bit more,” Brown said. “I feel like I have a much better connection with them, and hopefully that translates into a better understanding of what’s going on with them from a healthcare standpoint.”
Whitson said that quality of care is what is bleeding through to all areas of the hospital. Hopedale takes care of anywhere and everywhere in the same manner, she said.
Brown likes to believe Hopedale’s wait times are achievable elsewhere, but he is growing less optimistic that the problems associated with long wait times will be solved at larger facilities. He and his team continue to work on it, though. He knows EPSS can impact those hospitals as four of the hospitals they serve had standout, short wait times.
If Brown could airlift anything from Hopedale into his other sites it would be Hopedale’s knowledge and understanding of its patients.
“When I take care of a patient at Hopedale, when I contact their physician, their physician knows them,” Brown said. “And the process particularly of admitting a patient or getting follow-up care for that patient, it’s clearly a model to strive for in other communities.”
Two other area hospitals also had shorter ER wait times than most: Carle Health Pekin Hospital and Carle Eureka Hospital, both at one hour and 56 minutes.
