AUSTIN (KXAN) -- Injuries, food, alcohol, mental health, and not staying on top of regular medication routines, are some of the biggest reasons experts say that emergency room visits spike around the holidays.
Dr. Ryan McCorkle, at St. David's Medical Center emergency department, said the holiday seasons are the busiest time of year for Central Texas emergency rooms.
"Around the holidays, we see increasing numbers on the days leading up to the holiday and the days after the holiday. We don't see as many on the actual holidays," McCorkle said.
McCorkle said of the many reasons for the ER patient surge this time of year, the most common are, diabetic emergencies, congestive heart failure, mental health issues, alcohol abuse, upper respiratory viruses, and viruses such as flu, RSV, or COVID.
"I guess one of the challenging things is we see a lot of people who are visiting their family from out of town and they don't have their medical records. So I think that's something that would be very useful for people to know," McCorkle said.
McCorkle and St. David's Medical Center encourage every patient visiting the ER this holiday season to help avoid experiencing long wait times by being ready and prepared.
If traveling to another city to visit friends and family, always carry medical records with you. Having that ready and prepared during an ER visit is helpful to hospital staff according to McCorkle.
"It's important to have the medications and the dosages of all the medications you're on. It's helpful if it's just in a list that says what it is, how many milligrams, how many times a day you take it, and what you take it for." McCorkle said, "Have a list of the major procedures you've had, if you've got stents in your heart, if you've had bypass if you've had abdominal surgeries, heart surgeries, those are things that we need to know about."
Around the holiday, mental health emergencies are just as frequent as physical emergencies. McCorkle said staff often deals with sad or lonely patients on the holiday rather than the days leading up to it.
"The staff that work on the holidays, have a lot of grace and patience for those people who come in for physical complaints, but they're tied to the fact that they're lonely on the holidays," McCorkle said.
St. David's Medical Center and McCorkle want to remind ER patients this holiday season to be patient with the health professionals caring for them.
"They're away from their families on the holiday too, and they're giving those up to be here to care for other folks," said McCorkle.
