Health

‘The Pitt’ Captures the Real Overcrowding Crisis in Emergency Rooms

Published

11 months ago

April 10, 2025

‘The Pitt’ Captures the Real Overcrowding Crisis in Emergency Rooms

The emergency department waiting room was jammed, as it always is, with patients sitting for hours, closely packed on hard metal chairs. Only those with conditions so dire they needed immediate care — like a heart attack — got seen immediately.

One man had had enough. He pounded on the glass window in front of the receptionist before storming out. As he left, he assaulted a nurse taking a smoking break. “Hard at work?” he called, as he strode off.

No, the event was not real, but it was art resembling life on “The Pitt,” the Max series that will stream its season finale on Thursday. The show takes place in a fictional Pittsburgh hospital’s emergency room. But the underlying theme — appalling overcrowding — is universal in this country. And it is not easy to fix.

“EDs are gridlocked and overwhelmed,” the American College of Emergency Physicians reported in 2023, referring to emergency departments.

“The system is at the breaking point,” said Dr. Benjamin S. Abella, chair of the department of emergency medicine at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine in New York.

“The Pitt” follows emergency room doctors, nurses, medical students, janitors and staff hour by hour over a single day as they deal with all manner of medical issues, ranging from a child who drowned helping her little sister get out of a swimming pool to a patient with a spider in her ear. There were heart attacks and strokes, overdoses, a patient with severe burns, an influencer poisoned by heavy metals in a skin cream.

Because this is television, many of the thorny problems get neatly resolved in the show’s 15 episodes. A woman who seems to have abandoned her elderly mother returns, apologizing because she fell asleep. Parents whose son died from an accidental fentanyl overdose come around to donating his organs. A pregnant teenager and her mother, at odds over a medical abortion, come to a resolution following a wise doctor’s counsel.

But over and over again, the image is of a system working way beyond its capacity. There is the jammed waiting room and the “boarders” — patients parked in emergency rooms or hallways for days or longer because there are no hospital beds. (The American College of Emergency Physicians calls boarding a “national public health crisis.”)

There are the long waits for simple tests. There is the hallway medicine — patients who see a doctor in the hallway, not in a private area, because there is no place else to put them.

And there is the violence, verbal and physical, from patients with mental problems and those, like the man who punched the nurse, who just get fed up.

“‘The Pitt’ shows the duress the system is under,” Dr. Abella said. “Across the country we see this day in and day out.”

But why can’t this problem be fixed?

Because there’s no simple solution, said Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, co-director of the Health Transformation Institute at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. The problem, he said is “multipronged and there is no magic wand.”

Part of it is money.

Having patients jammed up in emergency rooms guarantees that no bed will go unused, bolstering revenues for hospitals.

Then there’s the problem of discharging patients. Spaces are scarce in nursing homes and rehabilitation centers, so patients ready to leave the hospital often are stuck waiting for a space to open up elsewhere.

Schedules are another difficulty, said Dr. Jeremy S. Faust, attending physician in the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Department of Emergency Medicine. Many rehabilitation centers admit patients only during business hours, he said. If an E.R. patient is ready to be discharged to one during a weekend, that patient has to wait.

In “The Pitt,” as in real life, patients often show up in emergency rooms with problems — like a child with an earache — that a private doctor should be able to handle. Why don’t they just go to their own doctor instead of waiting hours to be seen?

One reason, Dr. Emanuel said, is that “primary care is going to hell in a handbasket.”

In many cities finding a primary care doctor is difficult. And even if you have one, getting an appointment can take days or weeks.

Many do not want to wait.

“The modern mentality, for better or worse, is: If I can’t get it now, I will look for other solutions,” Dr. Abella said.

That often means the emergency room.

Even building larger emergency rooms has not helped with the overcrowding.

Dr. Faust said that his hospital opened a new emergency room a few years ago with a large increase in the number of beds. A colleague, giving him a tour, proudly told him there was now so much space there would probably be no more hallway patients.

“I looked at him and said, ‘Bwhahahahaha,’” Dr. Faust said. “If you build it, they will come.”

He was right.

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Health

‘SuperAgers’ stay mentally sharp well past 80, as scientists reveal the reason

Published

46 minutes ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

‘SuperAgers’ stay mentally sharp well past 80, as scientists reveal the reason

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On the lookout

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Stat of the week

More than 59% of women may have high blood pressure by 2050, according to a new report from the American Heart Association.

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This article was written by Fox News staff.

Health

Heart disease threat projected to climb sharply for key demographic

Published

13 hours ago

February 27, 2026

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Heart disease threat projected to climb sharply for key demographic

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A new report by the American Heart Association (AHA) included some troubling predictions for the future of women’s health.

The forecast, published in the journal Circulation on Wednesday, projected increases in various comorbidities in American females by 2050.

More than 59% of women were predicted to have high blood pressure, up from less than 49% currently.

The review also projected that more than 25% of women will have diabetes, compared to about 15% today, and more than 61% will have obesity, compared to 44% currently.

As a result of these risk factors, the prevalence of cardiovascular disease and stroke is expected to rise to 14.4% from 10.7%.

The prevalence of cardiovascular disease and stroke in women is expected to rise to 14.4% from 10.7% by 2050. (iStock)

Not all trends were negative, as unhealthy cholesterol prevalence is expected to drop to about 22% from more than 42% today, the report stated.

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Dr. Elizabeth Klodas, a cardiologist and founder of Step One Foods in Minnesota, commented on these “jarring findings.”

“The fact that on our current trajectory, cardiometabolic disease is projected to explode in women within one generation should be a huge wake-up call,” she told Fox News Digital.

NEARLY 90% OF AMERICANS AT RISK OF SILENT DISEASE — HERE’S WHAT TO KNOW

“Hypertension, diabetes, obesity — these are all major risk factors for heart disease, and we are already seeing what those risks are driving. Heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women, eclipsing all other causes of death, including breast cancer.”

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for women in the U.S. and around the world. (iStock)

Klodas warned that heart disease starts early, progresses “stealthily,” and can present “out of the blue in devastating ways.”

The AHA published another study on Thursday revealing one million hospitalizations, showing that heart attack deaths are climbing among adults below the age of 55.

The more alarming finding, according to Klodas, is that young women were found more likely to die after their first heart attack than men of the same age.

DOCTOR SHARES 3 SIMPLE CHANGES TO STAY HEALTHY AND INDEPENDENT AS YOU AGE

“This is all especially tragic since heart disease is almost entirely preventable,” she said. “The earlier you start, the better.”

Children can show early evidence of plaque deposition in their arteries, which can be reversed through lifestyle changes if “undertaken early enough and aggressively enough,” according to the expert.

Moving more is one part of protecting a healthy heart, according to experts. (iStock)

Klodas suggested that rising heart conditions are associated with traditional risk factors, like smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, obesity and a sedentary lifestyle.

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Doctors are also seeing higher rates of preeclampsia, or high blood pressure during pregnancy, as well as gestational diabetes. Klodas noted that these are sex-specific risk factors that don’t typically contribute to complications until after menopause.

The best way to protect a healthy heart is to “do the basics,” Klodas recommended, including the following lifestyle habits.

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Klodas especially emphasized making improvements to diet, as the food people eat affects “every single risk factor that the AHA’s report highlights.”

“High blood pressure, high blood sugar, high cholesterol, excess weight – these are all conditions that are driven in part or in whole by food,” she said. “We eat multiple times every single day, which means what we eat has profound cumulative effects over time.”

“Even a small improvement in dietary intake, when maintained, can have a massive positive impact on health,” a doctor said. (iStock)

“Even a small improvement in dietary intake, when maintained, can have a massive positive impact on health.”

The doctor also recommends changing out a few snacks per day for healthier choices, which has been proven to “yield medication-level cholesterol reductions” in a month.

TEST YOURSELF WITH OUR LATEST LIFESTYLE QUIZ

“Keep up that small change and, over the course of a year, you could also lose 20 pounds and reduce your sodium intake enough to avoid blood pressure-lowering medications,” Klodas added.

“Women should not view the AHA report as inevitable. We have power over our health destinies. We just need to use it.”

Angelica Stabile is a lifestyle reporter for Fox News Digital.

Health

Vanessa Williams, 62, Opens up About Weight Loss and HRT After Menopause

Published

1 day ago

February 26, 2026

Press Room

Vanessa Williams, 62, Opens up About Weight Loss and HRT After Menopause

Vanessa Williams Opens up About Weight Loss and HRT | Woman’s World

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