Seventy-four per cent of Ontario emergency room doctors say overcrowding levels are critical or severe
Most of the physicians who responded to a recent survey also said overcrowding frequently impacts their ability to provide timely care
The results of a new survey released by the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) point to continued concern regarding wait times in Ontario emergency rooms.
The survey compiled feedback from 288 respondents, representing approximately 15 per cent of Ontario’s emergency room physicians. Seventy-four per cent of them said overcrowding is at a critical or severe level.
Three quarters of the physician respondents also reported that overcrowding impacts their ability to provide timely care to patients during most shifts.
“We think it’s really important to continue to highlight what’s going on, because this is what people are experiencing on the ground, both physicians, and patients experiencing it when they attend the emergency department,” OMA president Dr. Rebecca Hicks told CP24.
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Results of another survey, which polled 1,000 Ontario residents last March, seem to confirm that this is being felt on the patient side as well. Only 30 per cent of that survey’s respondents said they were confident or very confident that they would be provided with timely care in an Ontario emergency room.
Fifty-six per cent did say they were confident or very confident they would receive high-quality treatment, wait times aside.
“The majority of respondents state that they believe that the care that they receive in our emergency departments is high-quality care. The challenge is accessing it,” Hicks said.
Per CP24, patients who require hospital admission spend an average of 17.2 hours in emergency.
In a statement sent to CP24, Lily Barnes, a spokesperson for Health Minister Sylvia Jones, said Ontario’s wait times are actually not excessive in comparison to other areas, and that the province is working to shorten them.
“Ontario is proud to have some of the shortest wait times across the country,” she said.
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Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
