Our primary focus in the ER at Houlton Regional Hospital is to provide emergency medical care to people with a range of needs from life threatening conditions to minor injuries and illnesses. The department provides care 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and is consistently staffed with physicians, registered nurses, and midlevel providers.

Our ER has 10 patient treatment rooms.  Rooms are assigned to patients depending on the type of care needed, and the priority of their illness, or triage level.

When you come to the ER, you will be assessed by an experienced nurse trained in triage. The triage nurse will ask you all kinds of questions take your vital signs and look for clues about your condition, to assess your level of emergency.  He/she will also ask for your medication and allergy list (if time allows, make sure you bring your list with you and keep it updated!).

We will do our best to ensure you are taken to a treatment room promptly, but depending on the number and condition of patients in the ER, you may be asked to remain in the waiting room until an exam room becomes available

Why do I have to wait?

If the walls of the emergency room could talk, they would explain all of the things that are happening that you might not see from the waiting room, or your exam room.  Here are some things you may not have thought of before.

We often order lab tests that take time to be drawn and resulted. Some lab tests can take longer than an hour to be resulted. We may also perform x-rays, CT scans or ultrasounds in certain situations. All of these tests take time and need to be reviewed by the provider.

Sometimes, depending on the condition or sort of illness/injury you have, we may need to call in another doctor or specialist to look after you.  If the condition is severe enough, we need to admit patients to our hospital, and even transfer them to another, all of which can take time. Often, all 10 of our exam rooms are full of people getting lab tests, x-rays, waiting for a specialist, admission or transfer, or a combination of all of the above.

Contact information:

If you have an emergency, call 911.

For all other inquiries, call 207-532-2900

The ER entrance is located on the North side of our building at 92 Hartford Street. If you’re viewing this on a phone you can click the “Directions” link below to have your phone act as a GPS and direct you turn by turn to our facility.