Greater Sudbury is receiving more than $216,000 from the province as part of a program aimed at ensuring patients in emergency rooms get quicker access to care.
In a statement released Friday, Thibeault said the money will be used for nursing care.
“I am pleased to announce that Ontario is investing $216,824 in our community to help patients receive quicker access to care in hospital emergency rooms,” Thibeault said in the release. “The province will provide funding to 20 municipalities across Ontario for 300,000 dedicated emergency room nursing hours at 49 hospitals this year.”
The money will be used to fund nurses whose focus will be to receive ambulance patients at hospitals.
“This will allow dedicated nurses to work exclusively on receiving low-acuity patients from ambulances, which will enable paramedics to respond to other 911 calls in the community rather than waiting in the emergency room,” the release said. “Patients arriving at hospitals by ambulance with life-threatening conditions continue to be given priority by hospital staff.”
Municipalities who have received funding for these dedicated emergency room nurses have already reported seeing improvements in delays and emergency room wait times, the release said.
The money is from the province's Patients First: Action Plan for Health Care, which provides patients with faster access to the right care, better home and community care, the information they need to live healthy, and a health care system that is sustainable for generations to come.”
More information about that program can be found here.
