Reports of high average wait times at hospital emergency rooms across the country were punctuated by CTV News medical correspondent Avis Favaro’s latest story focusing on the dire consequences long wait times at crowded ERs can have on patients.
In light of studies showing patients admitted to ERs are waiting longer to get into an acute care bed, CTVNews.ca has collected wait time data over a recent time period from a selection of hospitals in cities across Canada, to give you a snapshot of the wait times Canadians are dealing with.
Interesting decisions on which hospitals to highlight. They list the Jewish General for Montreal, but not the Royal Victoria with its 6 hour average wait time.
I think they’re also being selective about what time of day they’re reporting. Their source claims that my local hospital has an average wait of 3 hours, and it does, briefly, at 8 am just after the shift change. The rest of the day is anywhere between 5-12 hours (or more), but I guess we don’t talk about that.
It’s definitely strange considering for Alberta they are showing every hospital in Calgary and Edmonton
It’s due to the capabilities of the wait times reporting system. Alberta has integrated reporting on all acute care sites, updated every 2 minutes, due to having a single organization (AHS) overseeing the IT and reporting infrastructure of every hospital in the province.
While the MUHC/CUSM has an emergency department, that’s not really their focus; they are also notorious for long ER wait times. In that sense, selecting them for this list would not be fair. Since the Jewish is the same health network, it makes more sense to chose them. Same with Saint Mary’s.
In that sense I think they chose right.
Wait why not? Selecting them seems ideal to represent wait times, cause I dont think anyone should have to wait at the er for hours
Mostly because of the specialization. The Jewish is specialized in ER (and super innovative at it too!). So they make the most sense to compare for ER. Anyone waiting at the Royal Vic should be their for one of their specialties (like EPRAC and chest). The children’s hospital (part of the Glen complex which includes the Royal Vic) has extremely low ER wait times. And so it should. Cannibalization of children’s ressources to supply the Vic’s ER defeats the purpose of specialization.
All this to say: the Royal Vic should maintain high wait times, to incentive prospective patients to go to hospitals that specialize in ER and have better wait time.
Montréal has enough hospitals that you can think of it like each department in a normal hospital having its own hospital. Sure they different depts/hospitals can do things outside their scope, but it’s not ideal.