Emergency Department Boarding Stories

My wife is a Pediatric Emergency Physician. She works at the [redacted] Children's Hospital in the world, with all available services at the hospital and patients from all over the world who come for  care. She walked into her shift the other day with over 50 patients in the waiting room of a 60+ bed ER, with all hospital and ER beds already full with sick patients and others holding to be admitted. Twenty-seven ER beds were being held up with actively psychotic or suicidal children with nowhere else to go. A young child had to sit in the waiting room for more than eight hours with their lower lip lacerated and nearly completely hanging off of their face, because there weren't any beds available to properly evaluate and treat the patient. This is a common occurrence at adult and children's hospitals throughout the country.