ER wait times at The Ottawa Hospital highest in the province

Emergency room wait times in the province were reported in a study by Health Quality Ontario which found that the average wait time is 1.6 hours, while the highest wait times in Ontario were at The Ottawa Hospital's General Campus, at 3.6 hours.

These numbers were taken in the summer months of June and July. 

There were only two other hospitals in the province with wait times averaging more than three hours. One of those was The Ottawa Hospital's Civic Campus, which averaged 3.2 hours, and the Hawkesbury and District General Hospital with an average wait time of 3.4 hours.

“What we've seen over the summer are three issues,” said Alan Forster, the hospital's vice-president of innovation and quality. “We've seen an increased volume in clinical activity, so more patients coming to the emergency department, our ALC (alternative level of care) patients numbers, and those represent patients in the hospital who don't have anywhere safe to go…. and the adoption of our new electronic medical record.”

He tells 1310 NEWS the hospital has a strategy in place to address each issue, in order to get wait times closer to the provincial average. They are working with paramedics and other hospitals to see how they can deal with the increased volume to try and redistribute care, and make the electronic record system more efficient and effective. 

Forster points out that the electronic system has changed the medical field for the beter.

He says it now allows medical charts to be documented using speech recognition, and can be distributed between health practicioners instantaneously. It's also used to provide patients with a 'plain language description' of why the patient was in the emergency department.

Forster says since it's a newer system, not everyone is using it as efficiently as the system is designed to work.

“If you've worked one way for 25-30 years and then overnight that changes to another way, there's going to be a period of adaptation.

He says they're already starting to see an improvement.

“Six to 12 months we would hopefully have a resolution, hopefully back to where we want to be.”