By Leah Den Hartogh [1]
BELLEVILLE – Patients who need to go to the emergency room or have surgery are having to wait longer now than in the past 20 years, according to a report [2] released Nov. 30 by the Ontario auditor-general.
The report said that at the three sample hospitals visited by the auditor general’s office in 2014-15, 47 per cent of patients who should have had emergency surgery within two to eight hours had to wait on average more than 10 hours. The problem is found at hospitals across the province, the report said.
Funding levels at this area’s hospitals. Chart by Charlotte McParland, QNet News
Among the reasons for the high wait times are emergency surgical patients not being given priority and operating rooms not being fully used, the report says.
Todd Smith, the Conservative MPP for Prince Edward-Hastings, told QNet News that the report “proves that there needs to be some work in streamlining the delivery of services.”
Wait times in emergency rooms are long for a number of reasons, Smith said. “People shouldn’t be going to the hospital for strep throat, or they shouldn’t be going to the emergency room if they have a case of the flu. The emergency room is for emergencies, not primary health-care needs.”
Ontario has a great health-care system, he said, “but there are a lot of problems with our health systems and there is enormous waste in our health-care system.”
Paul Huras, chief executive officer of the South East Local Health Integration Network [3], said that wait times “are not strictly a hospital problem – it’s a system problem.”
Huras said the LHIN would like to see a regional approach, with certain hospitals responsible for specific types of surgeries and services.
“We are trying to work with the hospitals to build that type of regional approach … such that we can maximize the value of all the sites together.”
With files from Tyler Penney [4] and Charlotte McParland [5].