By: Jim Kelly
The Chronicle Journal, Thursday, September 16, 2004

Overcrowded emergency rooms and corridors bulging with patients is a problem for most hospitals across the country, says Dr. Andrew Affleck, Director of Emergency and Trauma Services at Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre. As president of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, Dr. Affleck would like to see overcrowded emergency rooms on the agenda of the First Ministers Meeting On Healthcare. The Association has made its case known to Federal and Provincial Health Critics, Provincial Health Ministers, Premiers of all the Provinces and just about everyone else across Canada who has some influence on healthcare.

Dr. Affleck said there are about ten million visits annually to Canada’s Emergency Departments, five million in Ontario. Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre has about 90,000 visits a year. “It’s not non-urgent patients who are waiting that there’s a concern for,” Dr. Affleck said Wednesday in an interview at the Health Sciences Centre. “It’s where there’s a threat to someone’s health if the individual is experiencing chest or abdominal pain.” Dr. Affleck said it’s critical that such patients get immediate diagnosis and treatment. “Just because a patient doesn’t look sick doesn’t mean he or she isn’t”, he said.

Dr. Affleck said Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre had some growing pains and, as a result, there were some delays just after it opened, but the Health Sciences Centre is moving in the right direction. “We have to keep on pushing. We can’t give up.” Currently, Dr. Affleck said the average waiting time in the Emergency Department before a patient sees a Doctor is well under four hours compared to eight hours at hospitals in Southern Ontario. “Initially, we had overcrowding because of flow management and there were some things we had to work out”, he said. “It’s much better now since we’ve co-ordinated things with our X-ray and lab.”

Dr. Affleck admits some in-patient problems continue. These may be resolved if some or all of the 35 alternate level of care patients in the Health Sciences Centre can be moved elsewhere. Those are patients in acute care beds in a hospital who no longer require acute care services. They are waiting for other care such as rehabilitation, complex continuing care, long-term care or home care.

Dr. Affleck said his Association has identified the shortage of beds as the primary reason for wait times in Emergency Departments because patients get backlogged in the ER. The Association wants funding for beds restored “so we can ease the pressure on our Emergency facilities and staff”.