About this Website – Emergency Department (ED) Crowding and Boarding

This website is a product of legislation brought about by the Connecticut Emergency Department Boarding and Crowding Workgroup and seeks to report data and information on the practice of hospital boarding in emergency departments in the state of Connecticut.

The ED Boarding and Crowding workgroup was formed in 2023 as a result of PA 23-97 due to concerns about overcrowding in CT emergency departments. The workgroup filed an interim report in early 2024 and a final report in December of 2024.

With over 1.5 million annual visits to CT EDs many people will have experience with a crowded emergency department: long wait times, being evaluated or treated in a hallway, overworked staff. There is a persistent perception by the public and state officials alike that ED crowding is a result of “overutilization”, i.e. people coming to the ED who don’t need to be there. While this can be an issue, experts (including members on the workgroup) and data have shown that one of the biggest problems in causing ED crowding is the practice of hospital boarding.

Boarding occurs when someone is sick enough to stay in the hospital but remains physically in the ED rather than being moved to a hospital bed. There are many harms to boarding – when a patient remains on a hard stretcher, often under fluorescent lights, being cared for by personnel who also have responsibilities for incoming patients – the result is substandard medical care and staff burnout.

A somewhat arbitrary but internationally accepted “threshold” for boarding is 4 hours, meaning no patient should remain in the ED for more than 4 hours after an admission is decided upon/ordered.

In 2024 the legislature passed PA 24-4, which required each hospital in CT to report metrics on boarding annually through 2029. The first data (for calendar year 2024) was provided in March, 2025. This website is meant to provide a public-facing dashboard that displays the data that has been provided, and to provide information about this detrimental practice. We intend to update and track the data through 2029 and beyond if possible.