For a decade, California's number of emergency departments dwindled as the state grew in population, leading to longer ED wait times in a state of 39 million people, according to a UCSF study published in JAMA.
From 2011 to 2021, 3.8 percent of California's EDs closed, and the number of ED visits rose by 7.4 percent, according to the study. The number of hospital beds fell by 2.5 percent as the population grew 4.2 percent.
As the state lost 13 of its 339 EDs, visits deemed severe with threat increased 67.8 percent.
"Capacity has largely failed to match the rise in patient demand," Renee Hsia, MD, the lead author and an emergency medicine professor at UCSF, said in a news release.