The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) said Canada's hospital emergency rooms are in crisis "and patients across Canada are waiting far too long to receive necessary care."
The CMA said it's not just one hospital or community but a Canada-wide issue that needs to be addressed so that quick access to high-quality team-based primary care becomes the norm.
The information was part of a recent statement by CMA president Dr. Kathleen Ross, who said despite the best efforts of physicians, nurses and other health workers, some patients in Canada are waiting as long as 20 hours to get care.
"Staff shortages and hospital overcrowding combined with poor access to high-quality team-based primary care are leaving hospital emergency departments woefully under-resourced for the avalanche of patients with influenza, COVID-19 or respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) at this time of year," said Ross in a written statement.
She added that hospital ERs should be for emergencies and not a substitute for a walk-in clinic or a missed doctor's appointment.
Ross's comments are similar to the Ontario Auditor General's report on the state of Ontario hospital emergency rooms issued in December.
The auditor's report noted that ERs were facing a crisis because of the shortage of doctors and nurses which meant there was an unusually high demand for Locums (temporary fill-in physicians) at hospitals across Northern Ontario.
The auditor's report also published statistics (2022-23) on the time it took for an Ontario patient to be seen by a physician in the ER, with the South Bruce Grey Health Centre (Chesley) having the best time of roughly 35 minutes, while the Windsor Regional Hospital (Metropolitan campus) had the longest time of four hours and five minutes.
Collingwood General and Marine Hospital (CGMH) has an online "clock" showing wait times in the emergency department, a feature launched in the summer of 2022. at 10:30 a.m. on Jan. 30 the clock indicated a 1.5-hour wait to be seen by a doctor, with 19 patients in the emergency department currently. A graph showing historic trends indicates wait times ranging from more than one hour to almost three hours.
However, the emergency department is not a first-come, first-served system. It operates on a triage.
"The sickest patients are treated first, therefore wait times may vary from the time displayed here," states the hospital website.
In November, 2023, the Collingwood hospital started a program offering same-day ER appointments for urgent ailments that could wait a few hours for treatment. The idea was streamlining the emergency visit process with five "arrival times" between 8 a.m. and 9:15 a.m. from Monday to Friday that people could book the night before or the same morning.
Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre in Barrie has a similar booking system in place.
“We do have an after-hours clinic and they’re always backlogged as well, in terms of those appointments, so I think there is a real need and it’s not just in this area; I think it’s across the province and across the country,” said CGMH president and CEO Mike Lacroix in an interview at the end of 2023. “I believe there will be a role and a place for this type of non-urgent scheduling in the hospital setting, especially in a smaller community like ours, where there (are) limited options as to who you can see and when.”
Lacroix said there's a need for innovation in healthcare.
“I think we can’t just sit back and keep doing the same things that we’ve been doing for all these years,” said Lacroix.
For more information on same-day emergency department appointments, visit the hospital’s website at cgmh.on.ca.
- With files from Erika Engel
