Average ER Wait Time by State, Emergency Room Visit Map

Key points from the map

• Washington, D.C. has the longest emergency room visits on the map, at 5 hours 14 minutes, followed by Puerto Rico at 4 hours 41 minutes and Maryland at 4 hours 10 minutes.
• North Dakota has the shortest, at 1 hour 50 minutes. South Dakota (1hr 53m), Nebraska (1hr 54m), Hawaii (1hr 57m) and Iowa (1hr 59m) are also under two hours.
• The Northeast and Mid-Atlantic stand out: Rhode Island (3hr 38m), Massachusetts (3hr 36m), Delaware (3hr 31m) and New York (3hr 24m) are all above 3 hours 20 minutes.
• Most states fall between about 2 and 3 hours. Visual Capitalist gives the national median as 2 hours 42 minutes, with 20 states above it [1].
• The figures are the median time from arriving at the emergency department to leaving it, not the wait before seeing a doctor.

Average ER wait times by state in text

Title: Emergency Room Visit Times by State. Legend: Average visit times, shaded from 1hr 30m (palest) to 5hr 30m (darkest), with labels marking North Dakota as lowest and D.C. as highest. Footer: “Source: U.S Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 2024” and “Note: Median time patients spent in emergency room from time they arrived to time they left.” The Visual Capitalist logo sits bottom right.

The table lists every state and territory on the map, longest first. The minutes column is our conversion of the printed times. The last column is the same CMS measure from the newest release, added for comparison [2].

What the CMS measure counts

The numbers come from the CMS Timely and Effective Care state dataset [2]. The measure behind the map, coded OP-18b, is the “average (median) time patients spent in the emergency department before leaving from the visit, excluding patients transferred to another facility or psychiatric care/mental health patients” [2]. A lower number of minutes is better.

Visual Capitalist says its data was updated as of 30 October 2024 and excludes patients who died in the emergency department, left without the approval of a licensed provider, or had no documented discharge destination [1]. So the map shows the whole visit, including tests, treatment and discharge, for patients who were sent home.

How the latest figures compare

CMS has since published a newer release covering visits from 1 October 2024 to 30 September 2025 [2]. The ranking at the top and bottom is the same. D.C. is still longest at 303 minutes (5 hours 3 minutes) and Puerto Rico second at 292 minutes. North Dakota is still shortest at 110 minutes, the same as on the map [2].

Several states moved by ten minutes or more. New York fell from 204 minutes on the map to 194, Maryland from 250 to 246, and Massachusetts from 216 to 214. The national median in the CMS national file for the newer period is 162 minutes, or 2 hours 42 minutes [3], matching the figure Visual Capitalist gave for the map’s data [1].

Notes on this infographic

• The legend says “Average visit times”, but the footnote and the CMS measure name both describe a median [2]. The figures are medians.
• The source line says 2024. Visual Capitalist dates the data to the CMS release of 30 October 2024 [1]; the map’s values do not match the newest CMS release, which is shown in the table above for comparison [2].
• The measure is total time in the department, so it is not the same as the waiting time before being seen, which this map does not show.
• Oklahoma is printed as “2hrs”, which we read as 2 hours 0 minutes.

Questions about ER visit times

What is the average ER wait time?

This map does not show waiting time before treatment. It shows the median length of the whole emergency department visit. Nationally that was 162 minutes, or 2 hours 42 minutes, in the latest CMS national figures [3].

How long is the average ER visit?

About 2 hours 42 minutes at the national median [1] [3], but it varies widely by state, from 1 hour 50 minutes in North Dakota to more than 5 hours in Washington, D.C. [2].

Which state has the longest ER wait times?

Washington, D.C. has the longest emergency room visits on the map, at a median of 5 hours 14 minutes from arrival to leaving. Puerto Rico follows at 4 hours 41 minutes and Maryland at 4 hours 10 minutes. In the newer CMS release for October 2024 to September 2025, D.C. is still longest at 303 minutes and Puerto Rico second at 292 minutes [2].

Which state has the shortest ER visits?

North Dakota has the shortest emergency room visits, at a median of 1 hour 50 minutes, or 110 minutes. The figure is the same in the newer CMS release for October 2024 to September 2025 [2]. South Dakota (1hr 53m), Nebraska (1hr 54m), Hawaii (1hr 57m) and Iowa (1hr 59m) are also under two hours on the map.

Sources

1. Visual Capitalist, Mapped: Emergency Room Visit Times by State. The creator’s page for this map.
2. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Timely and Effective Care, State dataset (measure OP-18b).
3. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Timely and Effective Care, National dataset (measure OP-18b).

Last reviewed 30 October 2026