Shortage of psychiatric ER beds leaves at-risk patients waiting over 4 hours

On average, patients in psychiatric crisis — those at risk of hurting themselves or others — spend over four and a half hours waiting for emergency admission to a hospital, as a scarcity of available facilities makes finding an open bed a serious challenge.

The average time police spent arranging emergency psychiatric admission was four hours and 32 minutes in 2025, up 15 minutes from a year earlier, data submitted by the National Police Agency to People Power Party Rep. Han Zee-a showed Monday. The average time in the first half of this year slightly fell, but still required a four-hour-and-28-minute wait.

Emergency psychiatric admission allows a person believed to have a mental illness and considered at high risk of harming themselves or others to be urgently admitted to a psychiatric medical institution with the consent of a doctor and a police officer.

The number of emergency admission requests made by police has also surged. A total of 20,839 requests were made in 2025, up about 2.7-fold from 7,724 in 2021. Police made another 12,038 requests in the first half of this year.

"It is difficult to readily find a hospital that can admit these patients," a police official said.

A post uploaded in July to an online community for people with depression and other conditions illustrated the difficulty.

"I'm having [suicidal] urges, but it's difficult even to get [an emergency admission] request accepted at a university hospital," the post read.

Medical professionals point to a shortage of facilities willing and able to accept psychiatric emergency patients as the biggest problem.

Korea only has 14 regional psychiatric emergency medical centers that provide round-the-clock physical and psychiatric care to patients facing life-threatening psychiatric emergencies, including those who have attempted suicide.

Dankook University Hospital was given the designation in August, bringing such a facility to South Chungcheong for the first time. But South Jeolla, Busan and northern Gyeonggi still have none.

The centers also have few beds dedicated to psychiatric emergencies. Boramae Medical Center has three dedicated observation beds, while each of the other centers has just two, bringing the nationwide total to only 29.

"Hospitals need to secure dedicated beds separately and also meet separate staffing requirements for psychiatry and emergency medicine," a Ministry of Health and Welfare official said.

Those requirements have made it difficult to encourage more hospitals to participate.

"Patients with physical illnesses can receive emergency treatment at regional emergency medical centers and then move on to follow-up care such as surgery or hospitalization, but regional psychiatric emergency medical centers treat patients in their two dedicated beds for a day or two before sending them to another hospital," said Lee Hae-kook, a psychiatry professor at Uijeongbu St. Mary's Hospital. "Even when a center exists in a region, it is difficult for it to properly fulfill its role."

Hospitals also face difficulties under emergency medical center evaluations that do not fully account for the nature of psychiatric emergency care.

The current evaluation system uses the length of time patients remain in the emergency room, with six hours serving as a key benchmark, to encourage their prompt discharge or transfer. But psychiatric emergency patients often require prolonged observation, which means hospitals can effectively be penalized in evaluations for providing the care those patients need.

"We are working to revise the relevant indicators based on feedback from the field," a Health and Welfare Ministry official said.

Staffing shortages at hospitals that treat acute psychiatric emergencies are another concern.

There were 2,319 psychiatry specialists working at clinics in June 2025, up 24.5 percent from 1,863 in 2021. But the number of psychiatry specialists working at tertiary and general hospitals fell by 5.4 percent, from 720 to 681 over the same period.

"As more psychiatrists open private clinics, access to outpatient care for conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder has improved," said a professor working at a university hospital. "But the medical work force available to respond to emergencies such as suicide attempts is actually shrinking."

Rep. Han called for an end to the lengthy waits for emergency psychiatric admission.

"The reality that people experiencing suicidal urges have to wait four hours and 32 minutes to find a hospital that can admit them must change," Rep. Han said. "Suicide prevention must be demonstrated not through slogans, but through beds and medical staff that allow people to receive immediate treatment in moments of crisis."

BY CHAE HYE-SEON [[email protected]]