Workers say that overcrowding and staffing shortages at the UCSF Parnassus emergency room are putting patients in unsafe conditions, with many receiving care in hallways or on the waiting room floor.
As Mission Local reports, staff members say conditions inside the emergency department at University of California San Francisco Medical Center at Parnassus Heights have deteriorated to the point where patients wait hours for treatment. In some cases, patients suffer medical emergencies while beds sit unused due to staffing shortages.
Workers describe a growing gap between UCSF’s reputation as a premier hospital and what they say is happening inside the ER, where overcrowding and understaffing have become routine.
Concerns about conditions inside UCSF’s emergency department aren’t new. Back in 2023, nurses at UCSF Health told the San Francisco Standard that overcrowding and understaffing had pushed the ER into what some described as “war zone” conditions, with patients reportedly waiting days for beds and being cared for in hallways or even on the floor.
At the time, 125 charge nurses submitted a petition to hospital leadership saying they could no longer provide safe patient care under existing staffing conditions. The demands included more staffing support, better patient flow, and additional emergency resources.
In 2025, a report from the Chronicle found that UCSF was among the city’s worst hospitals for ambulance offload delays, with emergency patients often stuck waiting far beyond the state’s 30-minute transfer target before entering the ER system.
Now, many frontline workers believe the situation has only deteriorated further. According to Mission Local, providers now describe critically ill patients waiting hours for treatment, hallway beds functioning as semi-permanent care spaces, and mounting fears that delays are contributing to preventable harm.
“We’ve had several cases where patients have seized in the ER that are 100 percent preventable,” said one provider. “All the times are because of medication delays, and the delays result in them having a seizure.”
A major issue cited by Mission Local is “boarding,” where admitted patients remain stuck in the emergency department because no inpatient beds are available upstairs. Workers say this leaves ER beds occupied for days at a time, creating a bottleneck where incoming patients pile up in waiting rooms or are treated in makeshift spaces.
The outlet details the story of an elderly woman who came to the ER with a pulmonary embolism and was forced to spend three days in a bed in the hallway. Another patient fainted on the floor, and workers treated him on the ground because there weren’t any beds.
The report notes that California law limits emergency nurses to four patients each, but providers claim staffing levels have dropped dramatically in recent years, leaving parts of the ER effectively unusable despite demand continuing to climb.
“Imagine our frustration when we see 10 beds that are open, where a patient could be and have a private space, but we don’t have enough staffing for them,” one provider told Mission Local. “We have the capacity to take care of more people.”
UCSF leadership has reportedly acknowledged the problems with long waits and overcrowding, but they say the problems reflect a broader national emergency care crisis affecting hospitals across the country.
Still, multiple workers pointed to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital as a comparison, saying the public hospital is better staffed and more effective at moving admitted patients upstairs.
At the heart of the problems could be simple dollars and cents. Since Suresh Gunasekaran became president and CEO of UCSF Health in 2022, the system has reportedly swung from a $116 million loss in 2023 to an $809 million surplus in 2025, alongside major revenue growth and expansion.
Residents and physicians have reportedly organized petitions and rallies calling for more nurses and safer staffing levels, arguing that a world-renowned medical institution should not be operating with what they describe as collapsing emergency care conditions.
Image: UCSF/Google Maps
