EXPLAINER 3 OF 6 / GAP 1
An ambulance arrives.
Then it waits.
When an ambulance reaches an ER, the crew hands the patient over before it can take the next call. At some hospitals near El Segundo, that handoff runs far past the county’s standard.
Historical ambulance offload delays need current follow-up
What the records show
The six nearby hospitals with January 2026 measurements shown here exceeded the county’s 30-minute standard at the 90th percentile. The state report lists hospitals exceeding their local standard and excludes those with fewer than 60 qualifying records. It is not a full hospital census or a measure of current ER waits.
- About 70,000 people on a weekday. listing City of El Segundo Economic Development ↗“El Segundo's daytime population peaks at approximately 70,000 people on a daily basis”
- Harbor-UCLA’s 90th-percentile ambulance offload time was 1:09:47 in January 2026. fact California EMS Authority ↗“Harbor UCLA Medical Center 1030 1:09:47 0:30:00 0:39:47 74.2%”
- The state report excludes hospitals with fewer than 60 qualifying records. fact California EMS Authority ↗“Hospitals with less than 60 qualifying records were excluded from this assessment”
Why it matters
Our read
An ambulance waiting at a hospital door isn’t answering the next 9-1-1 call. Long offload times are a hidden cost to everyone in the area, not just the patient on the stretcher.
El Segundo has no county 9-1-1 receiving hospital inside the city, so its patients go to hospitals that serve much bigger areas. The numbers shown are from January 2026 and from a report that only lists hospitals over their standard, so they need current follow-up, not alarm.
What would help
Ideas to pledge toward
What would help estimate our ideas, not a plan anyone has adopted
- Ask the Fire Department to publish response times every year, with a stated goal (the newest report found is from 2022).
- Track the Torrance Memorial ER expansion due spring 2027, which says it will double treatment spaces.
- Map urgent care hours inside the city as a next layer, so residents know where to go for things that aren’t 9-1-1.
Pledge toward this gap → A signal, never a payment.
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