An Ontario resident says his newborn son had to wait over eight hours in an emergency room to be seen and admitted.
On Dec. 30, Joey Salmingo rushed his son to a hospital north of Toronto after he was experiencing a high fever. At the time, his son was only two and a half weeks old. Upon arriving at the ER, he says it took an hour to be seen by a triage nurse.
“That in itself was unacceptable because for us to wait that one hour just for them to figure out what’s going on with us is unacceptable because at the newborn stage, which is two and a half weeks old, you know, fevers can amount to any type of really serious condition,” he said in an interview with Now Toronto on Thursday.
After seeing the nurse, it took two hours for the parents to get a room and another two hours for a doctor to assess them and tell them a nurse will be conducting some tests. They waited around 41 minutes for a nurse to take samples, an additional hour and 26 minutes to receive test results and another hour and 15 minutes to be told they had to be admitted.
Overall, Salmingo says the entire process took eight hours and 15 minutes. He says he made sure to time his experience this time around because a month prior, he waited nine hours at the same emergency room.
Salmingo said when he arrived at the emergency room, it was completely full with no room to sit and it was clear many patients had been waiting for a long time. In fact, he observed that a couple who also came in with a newborn baby had left the hospital at the same time he and his wife did, and this was a family who had already been waiting when they arrived.
He emphasized that his problem with the healthcare system is not about the quality of care he’s receiving, but about getting that care in a timely manner.
He added that on Wednesday night he was at the emergency room once again for his daughter who had a fever. However, prior to deciding to go to the emergency room, he called Telehealth first in hopes of getting connected with a nurse. Instead, he was told that it would take seven hours for a nurse to call him back.
“That to me is new and mind blowing because when I got off the phone, we’ll call it the first step of Telehealth. I kind of just sat there and I was like, ‘Did they just say seven hours for a phone call?’ And my wife and I just had a quick conversation about what are we going to do?” Salmingo said.
At this point, the pair agreed to go to the emergency room once again. Fortunately, this time around, Salmingo says the process took two hours.
Following his experience with his son, Salmingo realized the government needs to take action and improve the cracks in the country’s healthcare system.
“I think the problem is that the government is reactive as opposed to proactive. They’re going to wait for the problem before they decide to do something. They need to be proactive. They need to address the healthcare system because it is one of the more important things they should prioritize because our healthcare system is what keeps us alive, it keeps us healthy,” he said.
“The saddest thing about this is, this is not unique to one hospital. And this is not unique to us. This is something that’s going on across the province, across the country. So, something’s wrong with the system, and something needs to change,” he added.
The Markham resident also mentioned that there is a growing amount of nurses leaving the healthcare system for a reason whether that is due to insufficient pay or burnout.
Last week, Canadian research company Nanos released a poll that found that 41 per cent of Ontario’s hospital staff say they “dread going into work,” with 43 per cent contemplating leaving their jobs over the next year.
READ MORE: Nearly half of Ontario’s hospital staff ‘dread going into work’: poll
ER WAIT TIMES ACROSS THE COUNTRY
On Thursday, the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) re-issued a statement calling on provinces and territories to improve access to emergency care.
According to the CMA, some patients across the country are waiting up to 20 hours or longer to receive care in an emergency room.
“Staff shortages and hospital overcrowding combined with poor access to high-quality team-based primary care are leaving hospital emergency departments woefully under-resourced for the avalanche of patients with influenza, COVID-19 or respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) at this time of year,” reads a press release by CMA.
In Ontario, the median wait time in an emergency department to get admitted is 15.6 hours, based on data collected by the Canadian Institute for Health Information’s National Ambulatory Care Reporting System (NACRS) from April 2022 to Mar. 2023.
Elsewhere in Canada, the ER wait time is even higher:
- Manitoba- 21.5 hours
- Quebec- 21.1 hours
- Prince Edward Island- 20.7 hours
- Nova Scotia- 12.9 hours
- Saskatchewan- 9 hours
- Alberta- 12.3 hours
- British Columbia- 18 hours
- Yukon- 7.6 hours
“In 2022–2023, abdominal and pelvic pain, and pain in the throat and chest continued to be the most frequent main problem diagnoses in EDs. Volumes of ED visits increased for respiratory infections and viral infections, and these were among the top main problem diagnoses in 2022–2023,” the NACRS said.
