‘It’s safe’: Chief of ‘paperless emergency department’ at new Vaughan hospital urges sick people to seek care

‘We've seen people showing up to the emergency departments much sicker because they just delete their care,’ says Dr. Rauchwerger

Yorkregion.com
June 7, 2021
Dina Al-Shibeeb

Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital is Canada’s first smart hospital, and this has captured headlines. But it’s also home to one of the first “paperless emergency departments” in York Region, its director told Yorkregion.com on the same day of the hospital’s official opening on Sunday, June 6.

With Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital now open as a full-service hospital, it will combine its emergency department with that of its sister institution, Mackenzie Richmond Hill Hospital, giving York Region the space and time to accommodate an already backlogged health-care system, dating back to when COVID-19 was unheard of.

“We're hoping to see upwards of 250 patients per day or visits per day; that would put the two sites combined in Richmond Hill and Cortellucci to be (among) the busiest emergency departments in the province,” said Dr. David Rauchwerger, chief and medical director of the emergency medicine program at the new hospital.

“To put things in perspective, currently at Richmond Hill, we're seeing about 300 patients per day.”

However, with the new hospital in Vaughan, Dr. Rauchwerger expects a shift in the visiting pattern.

“We hope that those local residents will be served by the local hospital here,” he added.

So far, visits to the emergency department have “been climbing upwards to reach their pre-pandemic levels, and we're almost there.”

For example, Richmond Hill’s average number of visits to the emergency department was about 320 a day.

“So it's just a matter of people realizing that they need to seek the emergency care that they need, and I think that's also normalizing.”

COVID-19 has created some scares, causing people not to visit when they are in dire need of care.

“Not only is it the safest place to go to, the emergency department, we've seen people showing up to the emergency departments much sicker because they just delete their care and they thought ‘it's the pandemic and I really don’t want to go to hospital,’” he said.

“We've been encouraging or trying to encourage people that continue to seek acute care. I'm hoping that now that we have the local hospital, that we have the new technology, that we have the new emergency department, that people will come to also seek the care that they need.”

The initial move to go fully paperless began at Richmond Hill’s hospital, but Dr. Rauchwerger explained that the first implementation of the entire digital process is in the new hospital.

People arriving will have their first encounter with technology at the triage ticketing machine, for example, and will be able to access all their medical records, from diagnostic tests and results to future appointments, online.

"It's been quite an evaluation to watch," he said.

When speaking with the doctor at around 2:30 p.m., he said, “We have already taken over 50 people here. And a significant number of ambulances as well.”