Eastern Ontario hospital has province’s longest wait to see a doctor

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Hospitals in Ottawa and eastern Ontario had some of the longest emergency room wait times in the province in October, new data shows.

The new data from Health Quality Ontario shows the Hawkesbury and District General Hospital had the longest average wait times to see a doctor in the province, with patients waiting an average of 4.6 hours before their first assessment.

That’s well above the provincial average of 2.2 hours, which is at its highest so far this year.

CHEO saw an average wait time of 4.2 hours to be assessed by a doctor in October, as the surge of children experiencing serious respiratory illnesses ramped up. The Ottawa Hospital’s General Campus saw an average wait time of 3.8 hours to see a doctor. Both of those were among the top five in the province.

Other Ottawa hospitals were closer to the provincial average: Queensway Carleton Hospital saw a 2.6-hour average, The Ottawa Hospital Civic campus at 2.5 and the Montfort Hospital at 2.2.

For patients who were admitted to hospital, Ontario reached a new record in average wait times in October.

Patients spent an average of 22.9 hours in an emergency room that month waiting to be admitted, the highest average wait time for hospital admissions from Ontario ERs in the past year.

According to the HQO, just 21 per cent of patients were admitted from the ER within the provincial target of eight hours.

Ottawa hospitals fared better when it came to admitting patients, with the Queensway Carleton Hospital (24.7 hours) and the Ottawa Hospital General campus (23.6 hours) just above the provincial average time. The Civic Campus saw an average time of 20.3 hours, CHEO’s was 17.7 hours, and the Montfort’s was 17.5.

The longest admissions wait times in the province were at the West Lincoln Memorial Hospital in Hamilton, where patients waited an average of 68.3 hours to be admitted from the emergency room.