York Region hospitals make strides on ER wait times
Newmarket’s Southlake Regional Health Centre Emergency Room tops province in wait time, department director says

Yorkregion.com
Nov. 21, 2016
By Chris Simon

Many other Ontario hospitals can look toward York Region for inspiration when reducing wait times.

Newmarket’s Southlake Regional Health Centre is top in Ontario for ER wait times - at about 1.3 hours on average. According to Health Quality Ontario’s recently released Under Pressure: Emergency Department Performance in Ontario, the limit patients waited in Emergency to see a doctor in 2014-2015 was three hours.

“We are leaders in the province, specifically our door to doctor time, which far exceeds the provincial average,” Emergency department director Kim Storey said. “We’ve found a number of operational efficiencies and a philosophy change. We’re able to react, in real time, to our patients. We’re really proud. Wait times translate into quality of care.”

Southlake’s ER handles about 300 patients per day - they’re on pace for 111,000 in total this year. That makes the Southlake ER one of the busiest in the province, she said.

Physician schedules are tailored to meet patient needs every day and the doctors are assisted by ‘navigators’ tasked with organizing some of the routine elements of their jobs. This allows the doctors to focus on providing care, rather than searching for reports or scheduling their time. Also, the provincial Pay-for-Results financial incentive program has played a prominent role in motivating the hospital to reduce wait times, she said.

Markham Stouffville Hospital is also exceeding expectations, with wait times of 2.1 hours in 2014-2015 and two in 2015-2016. Among other initiatives, MSH has an estimated ER wait time section for its Markham and Uxbridge facilities on msh.on.ca. The ER pages include: the number of patients at the hospital, a stopwatch image with a wait time indicator, and a graph showing the estimated busiest times for the department over the upcoming six hours. There’s also a list of potential alternatives to the ER, like local clinics and links for Telehealth Ontario and Health Care Connect, posted prominently on the right hand side of the pages.

Meanwhile, wait times are also declining at Richmond Hill’s Mackenzie Health in each of the last three years. So far in the 2016-2017 fiscal year, wait time is 2.6 hours, compared to 3.2 the year before. The wait time was 3.4 hours in 2014-2015.

“On any given day, we see 250 to 320 patients at (the) Emergency department,” Mackenzie spokesperson Catalina Guran said, noting the hospital had 109,000 emergency and urgent care visits in 2015-2016.

Mackenzie offsets some ER visits by offering an Urgent Care Centre, 9401 Jane St. in Vaughan, for patients of all ages with non-life-threatening illnesses or injuries that do not require hospitalization or immediate surgery. The centre has on-site diagnostic and treatment services such as; x-rays, casts, stitches and laboratory tests.