{"id":897,"date":"2017-02-07T02:11:13","date_gmt":"2017-02-07T07:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/activeseniorsdigest.ca\/wp_activeseniorsdigest\/?p=897"},"modified":"2017-02-07T02:11:13","modified_gmt":"2017-02-07T07:11:13","slug":"er-wait-times-down-but-visits-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/activeseniorsdigest.ca\/wp_activeseniorsdigest\/?p=897","title":{"rendered":"ER wait times down, but visits up"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Report<\/a>
Report finds people going to the emergency department are sicker and getting older<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Graeme McNaughton\/Active Senior’s Digest<\/p>\n

It\u2019s good news and bad news for hospitals.<\/p>\n

According to a new report from Health Quality Ontario (HQO), the average wait times in the emergency room have gone down, with 89.9 per cent of low-acuity patients \u2013 or those with low-level medical needs \u2013 being seen and discharged within a four-hour window. For those with more complex needs, or high-acuity patients, 85.7 per cent will be in and out within eight hours.<\/p>\n

However, according to Dr. Joshua Tepper, the president of HQO, this still means that there is a long way to go in improving the province\u2019s healthcare system.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo have more people, sicker people, going into the (emergency department) and still be able to not just maintain but improve our wait times is good,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think where we see areas of concern is that, first of all, the wait times are still not insignificant and are particularly significant for people who have been admitted to the hospital that are still waiting in the emergency room to go upstairs, as we say, to get admitted to a bed. That wait is still very long.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another area of concern for Tepper is the type of patients that are coming to the province\u2019s emergency departments \u2013 most notably, they are sicker, \u201cand we predict it to only get worse going forward,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

According to the HQO report, the number of visits to the ER by high-acuity patients has gone up 44.1 per cent in the past seven years. The report also states that visits made by patients 65 and older, who tend to require more complex care, has gone up by 29.1 per cent in the same timeframe. In total, 52.7 per cent of patients admitted to hospital via an unscheduled visit to the ER were aged 65 and up.<\/p>\n

And with an aging population on the horizon \u2013 Statistics Canada says that the number of seniors will be larger than the number of children by next year and will make up approximately a quarter of the country\u2019s population by 2036 \u2013 Tepper says the province\u2019s healthcare system needs to be looked at in order to make it work for everyone.<\/p>\n

One way to fix that, he says, is not to look at the hospitals and its emergency rooms, but at other parts of the system.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the reasons people go to the emergency room is it is a place where they can get a lot of access to resources in a short time. If we can empower our primary care system and our homecare system to have some of those accesses to resources, it will provide an alternative,\u201d Tepper says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am a family doctor, and I also work in the emergency department. I know that as a family doctor, sometimes at four in the afternoon\u2026there\u2019s no other option for me to get an x-ray done or an ultrasound done in a timely way, and I\u2019m stuck saying, \u2018I\u2019m sorry, you have to go to the emergency department.\u2019 If I had access to specialty or imaging or laboratory resources, I might be able to handle it differently.\u201d<\/p>\n

The president of HQO adds that if general practioners were to have access to these more specialized services, it would help people get the care the need and reduce the number of people that have to go to the emergency room because they have nowhere else to go \u2013 the HQO study finds that 47 per cent of adults who went to an emergency room in Ontario said they went there for something that could have been taken care of by their family doctor, but that they were not available.<\/p>\n

Another issue facing seniors in Ontario\u2019s hospitals, the report finds, is a shortage of beds. Tepper, however, says that the issue is more complicated than just having more beds available.<\/p>\n

\u201cA reason they don\u2019t have beds is that a lot of people in the hospital who are not sick enough that they need a hospital-based care, but they have no place else to go, outside in the community,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

According to the HQO report, nine out of 10 admitted patients spent up to 29.4 hours in the emergency department last year, with a vast majority of that time \u2013 22.5 hours \u2013 spent waiting in the ER to go to an inpatient ward. On average, 13.7 per cent of the days that a bed in a hospital is occupied, it was for patients awaiting access to an alternative level of care, such as a long-term care home or a rehabilitation facility.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more we could do to figure out how to move these patients out into the community, into long-term care, out into the community faster, would allow us to move patients out of the emergency room faster and really shorten that wait time that can be hours or days in some cases.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Graeme McNaughton\/Active Senior’s Digest It\u2019s good news and bad news for hospitals. 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