Emergency room bypass rates spiked last year at area hospitals
Hospitals in the Chicago area diverted ambulances from emergency rooms last year at a rate almost double the year before.
Among hospital emergency departments that saw increased time on bypass in 2024 were AdventHealth Glenoaks in Glendale Heights, Advocate Condell in Libertyville, Advocate Lutheran General in Park Ridge, Ascension Alexian Brothers in Elk Grove Village, Ascension St. Alexius in Hoffman Estates and Northwestern Medicine Delnor in Geneva, according to Illinois Department of Public Health records.
Hospital emergency departments in the five IDPH service regions that make up the Chicago area were on bypass a combined 930 hours, according to state records. The year before, those hospitals only went on bypass a combined 562 hours.
Research has shown poorer outcomes for some patients who have to be diverted during extended emergency room bypass hours.
“We want to prevent this as much as we can to serve the patients,” said Ashley Thoele, chief operating officer at the Illinois Department of Public Health. “We don’t want to put a hospital on bypass and risk overwhelming hospitals around them, so it should be used sparingly.”
Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, one of the region’s trauma centers with the highest designations, was on bypass for 55 hours last year, more than in any of the previous three years. It spent more than four hours on bypass as recently as Dec. 27, IDPH records show.
“Advocate Lutheran General Hospital experienced an increase in bypass hours in 2024 due to high patient volumes in both the emergency department and inpatient settings,” said Advocate Health spokeswoman Julie Nakis. “The Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board recently approved an application to expand our hospital’s bed capacity to support the growing health care needs of our community.”
2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
2793.26 | 719 | 561.93 | 930.15 |
Source: Illinois Department of Public Health |
Still, the recent bypass figures pale in comparison to the nearly 2,800 hours emergency rooms in the Chicago area were telling ambulances to find help elsewhere in 2021 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Hospitals make every effort to avoid bypass status, but it is sometimes necessary to ensure patients receive the best care in a timely manner,” said Paris Ervin, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Health and Hospital Association. “Bypass is used as a last resort in instances where a particular hospital is experiencing factors, such as high patient volume, that are temporarily placing stress on the facility and the staff.”
Staffing issues and equipment failures also can lead hospital officials to put their emergency rooms on bypass.
In late 2021, Advocate Sherman Hospital in Elgin was put on bypass for dozens of hours after experiencing a shortage of anesthesiologists.
Hospital officials don’t need permission to put an emergency room on bypass, but they do need to notify IDPH when it happens. Efforts to prevent going on bypass, such as calling in additional staff or adding beds, should be exhausted first, IDPH officials said.
“There is a high level of communication with these hospitals to understand what they are experiencing,” Thoele said.
And even if a hospital’s emergency department goes on bypass, that only pertains to ambulance runs. Patients won’t be turned away if they arrive seeking medical attention on their own. Paramedics can still bring in new patients too if they are severely ill or seriously injured, authorities are quick to note.
Still, there are some hospitals that never went on bypass during the past four years. Endeavor Health Edward Hospital in Naperville is one of them.
“We have been really fortunate,” said Ellen Turnbull, Endeavor Health’s director of emergency services for the south region. “We’ve worked really hard with our leaders on site to be creative to find places for admitted patients and to find additional resources or call in extra staff. We’ve been really lucky to have that extra support.”
Region 8, which includes hospitals in western Cook County and all of DuPage County, is the only service region in the Chicago area that didn’t experience a spike in the number of combined bypass hours last year. Hospitals there were on bypass for a total of just 9.27 hours in 2024, state records show.
In Region 9, which covers hospitals in Northwest Cook County, western Lake County, all of Kane and McHenry counties and northern Kendall County, emergency rooms combined for 174-plus hours of bypass last year, up from 152 combined hours in 2023.
Before the pandemic, IDPH was investigating a number of hospitals that put their emergency departments on bypass at a higher than average rate. State officials wouldn’t say if there are any current active investigations into excessive use of bypass protocols.