Emergency care

Emergency care is the treatment of unexpected, severe medical injuries or infections. It is typically delivered in an emergency room or an ambulance. Our emergency medicine physicians stabilize your condition as quickly as possible to prepare you for the next step of care or discharge.

Get Directions Call Consult-A-Nurse®: (844) 706-8773

Emergency room in Pensacola

At HCA Florida West Hospital, we are committed to providing you with easy access to emergency medical services.

Our specially trained emergency room doctors are available 24/7 to serve your immediate health needs. We offer full-service emergency care to adults, children and seniors. Our pediatric emergency room provides comfortable care to children of all ages. Our emergency physicians also offer compassionate, senior-friendly care to older patients.

If you think you may be experiencing a medical emergency, call 911 immediately.

Our emergency room services

We provide a range of high-quality emergency care services to patients of all ages.

Pediatric emergency room

We realize that superheroes deserve super care, which is why we have opened an emergency room just for kids. Our full-service pediatric emergency room includes board-certified pediatricians, nurses and hospital staff that care for children in a comfortable, reassuring environment.

Our pediatric emergency room is separate from our main emergency room and is dedicated to treating the immediate needs of infants, children and adolescents.

Our pediatric emergency room offers:

Pediatric triage
Pediatric-friendly rooms
Pediatric-specific beds
Specially trained emergency staff

Senior-friendly emergency care

Our senior emergency services provide a new standard of care for geriatric patients and their families.

Older adults are at greater risk for cognitive and functional decline due to a combination of vulnerability, frailty and acute illness. By addressing a patient's needs in the emergency room, we can dramatically improve the patient's transition back home or to another healthcare setting, minimize emergency room "bounce back" and better prepare caregivers for what is to come.

Senior emergency services

We are recognized as an Accredited Chest Pain Center by the American College of Cardiology for our exceptional outcomes in treating cardiac emergencies. As part of our senior emergency care services, we provide:

Advanced cardiac monitoring
Coordination of care with nursing home medical directors, administrative directors and primary care physicians
Emergency admissions to our senior mental health program
Optimized communication with nursing homes, assisted living facilities and patient families
Real-time or follow-up consultation available with case management

Our goal is to meet the unique needs of each patient. This means addressing the crisis that prompted the emergency room visit and also evaluating the patient's overall health. This includes:

Collaborating with family/caregiver to ensure older adult care needs are met
Further screening for geriatric syndromes, such as depression, dementia, delirium or functional decline
Involvement of case management to assist in referrals to support services
Medication review for patients who have experienced a fall or an acute mental status change and patients taking medications that might put older adults at risk
Telephone follow-up with patient and/or caregiver to ensure a safe transition back home or to another healthcare facility

Perdido Bay emergency room

We are proud to provide a freestanding emergency department on the west side of Escambia County near Perdido Bay. Our Perdido Bay emergency room opened in September 2018 and is located on the northwest corner of Highway 98 and Blue Angel Parkway.

The Perdido Bay emergency room is a full-service, 24/7 emergency room that offers all the same specialties, including pediatric and senior-friendly care, that the HCA Florida West Hospital emergency room offers.

Our emergency room wait times

When it comes to emergency care, our goal is to continually work toward enhancing the care you receive, while reducing our wait times. This ensures you get the care you need, when you need it most.

Our wait times are updated every 30 minutes and are available on our website.

To find out the wait times of the HCA Florida emergency room nearest to you, check the top of our website or text "ER" to 32222.

Note: Message and data rates may apply. Emergency room wait times are approximate and provided for informational purposes only.

When to go to the emergency room

We understand it can be hard to know what type of medical care you need, like whether you should go to the emergency room or wait for your doctor's office to open.

Conditions that may require emergency care

We want you to feel secure about your choice for care, which is why we've created a list of symptoms that may indicate you need to visit the emergency room:

Back pain, when it is unbearable or accompanied by fever, numbness, weakness, confusion, slurred speech, vision loss or loss of control over bladder or bowels
Broken bones, when the pain is severe or there is a visible deformity
Chest pain, when it is crushing or squeezing and accompanied by other heart attack symptoms, such as shortness of breath or nausea
Concussion, when you have lost consciousness, even briefly, or experience amnesia, vomiting, slurred speech or a seizure
Flu, when symptoms become severe, such as having trouble breathing, vomiting uncontrollably or becoming dehydrated
Side pain, when it is severe and occurs in the lower right stomach, side or back or is accompanied by fever, nausea, diarrhea or blood in the urine
Stomach pain, when accompanied by a hard or tender stomach, nausea, shortness of breath, fever or irregular heartbeat
Trouble breathing, when breathing stops, is noisy or high-pitched and comes with pain in the chest or severe shortness of breath

If you are unsure if your symptoms require an emergency room visit, you can speak to a nurse 24/7 by calling our Consult-A-Nurse® line.

What to expect at the emergency room

When you get to the emergency room, one of our triage nurses will assess your symptoms and vital signs. Next, a registration clerk will collect your insurance card (if available) and other information.

We medically screen, evaluate and stabilize all patients — whether or not they have insurance or are able to pay.

Anyone who has severe, life-threatening illnesses or injuries will be treated first. Everyone else will be treated in the order they arrive.

Before discharge, we encourage you to ask our emergency care teams any questions you have. It is also useful for you to keep all of your paperwork, discharge information and medicines or prescriptions together after you leave the emergency room.