Emergency Services

Chester River Hospital's Emergency Department, located in the heart of Chestertown, is open 24 hrs a day, seven days a week and is ready to meet your emergency needs.

The Department is staffed with Board Certified Emergency Physicians, or other Board Certified physicians with extensive emergency department experience, as well as seasoned midlevel providers, such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants. The nursing staff is seasoned as well, many with critical experience and pediatric experience. We also have several nurses who are certified as Sexual Assault Forensic Examiners who are specially trained to manage the medical and forensic issues related to sexual assaults. Most of our physician and nursing staff are local people who have chosen to live and work in the Upper Shore, serving the needs of our community. We truly are neighbors caring for neighbors.

Our emergency care professionals are supported by the most advanced technology to diagnose, treat and heal the growing numbers of patients who enter our doors, be it for heart attack, stroke, or trauma. All of our patients receive state of the art stabilization and initial treatment in our emergency department, and most can be completely managed at CRHC as an inpatient or outpatient. A few patients requiring more advanced, tertiary care will need to be transferred to other, larger facilities like the University of Maryland, once the initial stabilization and management of life threatening emergencies has occurred.

Upon arrival to the Emergency Department, patients are typically brought immediately back to a room, bypassing the registration and triage processes, which will occur at the bedside once the patient's immediate needs are met by the physician, midlevel and nurse team. Our goal is to have patients in a bed within 5 minutes of arrival and to be seen by a physician or midlevel provider within 30 minutes. The Emergency Department currently sees 16,000 patients annually and up to 20% of these patients are admitted to the hospital, where they are cared for by their primary physician or by the hospital based physicians known as "hospitalists", who are specialists in inpatient medicine.

The Chester River Hospital Emergency Department is committed to providing timely, compassionate and excellent emergency care to Chestertown and surrounding communities of the Upper and Mid Shore. We are an integral part of the community and your health care team and are always ready to provide emergency services – from life saving cardiac or stroke care to patching up bumps and bruises. We are neighbors caring for neighbors in their time of emergency.