Study paints grim picture of worsening wait times in northern Ont. ERs

A Montreal Economic Institute study found Canadians are enduring longer emergency room wait times, with northeastern Ontario hospitals ranging from 2 to 6 hours

A new study by the Canadian think tank MEI says new approaches are needed to deal with growing wait times at hospital emergency departments across Canada.

In particular, it suggests adopting a model used in France, where separate clinics are set up to deal with emergency cases that are not life and death, such as bone fractures, sprains and serious flu cases.

The study looked at the median times it takes patients to be assessed by a physician, as well as how long people spend in the ER, from the time they arrive until they are discharged.

Included was data from hospitals in northeastern Ontario, where Health Sciences North in Greater Sudbury reported the longest waits.

The median patient spent about 5 ½ hours at the ER before they were discharged from HSN. Results from other major hospitals in the northeast include three hours, 45 minutes at Timmins & District Hospital; four hours, 40 minutes at Sault Area Hospital; and, four hours, 56 minutes at North Bay Regional Health Centre.

The study also looked at the length of time it took to get an initial assessment from a doctor in the ER. Timmins again had the shortest time – one hour, 43 minutes – followed by the Sault (one hour, 56 minutes), North Bay (two hours, 16 minutes) and Sudbury (two hours, 23 minutes).

Results for all hospitals in northern Ontario – and Canada – can be found here.

Krystle Wittevrongel, MEI’s director of research, said in an interview that Canada’s system of funneling all emergency cases to the same community emergency departments is partly to blame for the ER bottlenecks plaguing the system.

While we do a good job of addressing critical cases as they come in, people with non-life-threatening but emergency cases are often left to wait several hours for care.

One option would be to adopt a model used in France where separate, middle-emergency clinics are set up to handle serious but not life-threatening cases.

The clinics are a midway point between walk-in clinics that can’t handle emergency cases and the overwhelmed emergency departments at hospitals.

“We tend to see a lot of patients going to the emergency room for care that might not need to be there,” Wittevrongel said.

“They might have a more minor injury like a sprain or a strain that isn’t necessarily emergency care but is a little bit much for primary care (physicians).”

Middle emergency clinics

She said France has had great success with this model, which is a better allocation of existing resources.

Similar to walk-in clinics, the middle care centres would be publicly funded but independently run by doctors and nurses.

“Rather than being the same as an urgent care centre like the Province of Ontario currently has, it’s more community-focused and so there’s also more localized decision-making, (offering) more flexibility for those doctors and nurses.”

She said the median length of stay in northeastern Ont. ERs is four hours, 14 minutes, which shows the differences in factors such as the number of hospital beds and staffing levels.

By creating a system of middle-emergency care centres, hospitals in the north could potentially ease the demand on existing staff, making it easier to retain people.

Read more on MEI’s study here.