{"id":23948,"date":"2022-07-27T16:15:16","date_gmt":"2022-07-27T20:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=23948"},"modified":"2022-07-27T16:15:25","modified_gmt":"2022-07-27T20:15:25","slug":"lakeland-regional-health-has-the-no-2-busiest-er-in-the-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2022\/07\/27\/lakeland-regional-health-has-the-no-2-busiest-er-in-the-nation\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakeland Regional Health has the No. 2 busiest ER in the nation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Lakeland Regional Health has the second busiest emergency department in the country, that\u2019s according to a new report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"970\" height=\"546\" data-id=\"23949\" src=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/0711_bn9_lakelandregionalerjpg.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-23949\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/0711_bn9_lakelandregionalerjpg.jpg 970w, https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/0711_bn9_lakelandregionalerjpg-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/0711_bn9_lakelandregionalerjpg-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 970px) 100vw, 970px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2599\" height=\"1462\" data-id=\"23950\" src=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/dfec6e6b-1b72-45f7-b811-f03b5f6e767d-081320_ep_LRH_3_NEWS.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-23950\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">ER physician Dr. Hal Escowitz has seen the growth of Lakeland Regional Health, since he first started practicing there 20 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe footprint of the emergency department has grown tremendously from when I first started practicing many years ago,\u201d said Escowitz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now LRH has most emergency room visits in the nation. New data from Becker&#8217;s Healthcare shows it saw 190,581 visits last year. This is partly because the hospital is the only trauma center in Polk County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cGun shot wounds, stab wounds, and the vast majority of what we see are due to motor vehicle collision,\u201d said Escowitz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dr. Escowitz tells ABC Action News also contributing to this high patient volume is short wait times and having the greatest number of beds and providers county-wide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAs the volumes increased over time, over the years we\u2019ve expanded coverage, we\u2019ve expanded hours, we\u2019ve added physicians, and we\u2019ve added nurses.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dr. Escowitz said many people who don\u2019t have access to primary care will visit the ER. While COVID-19 strained ER departments across the country, physicians at LRH were prepared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI don\u2019t know if anyone was emotionally prepared for that and what we saw but we were certainly prepared operationally,\u201d said Escowitz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And as Polk County experiences a surge in population growth, the hospital is building new sites to expand access to healthcare.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lakeland Regional Health has the second busiest emergency department in the country, that\u2019s according to a new report. ER physician Dr. Hal Escowitz has seen the growth of Lakeland Regional&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23949,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[3166],"class_list":["post-23948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-lakeland-regional-health-has-the-no-2-busiest-er-in-the-nation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}