'Small improvements' seen in ER wait times

Although wait times at Health Sciences North continue to be higher than the provincial average, there are some bright spots, particularly in the areas of hip and knee surgeries, and MRIs.

Last year, the emergency department underwent a “process improvement program,” making sure things are run as efficiently as possible.

“We had small improvements,” said Dave McNeil, the hospital's vice-president of clinical programs and chief nursing officer.

“For example, before, when we looked at the big indicator from the time patients register to the time they get to an inpatient bed, it was 39 hours. We've reduced that by 14 per cent (to 35 hours).”

But while that 14-per-cent reduction is an improvement, the hospital continues to struggle with wait times in other areas, particularly in the emergency department.

The median wait time for high acuity patients in Health Sciences North's emergency room, or the point at which half of the patients have been treated, is currently double the provincial average.

By the time most patients receive treatment, provincially the most serious cases have waited 10.9 hours, while the least serious wait 4.2 hours.

But at Health Sciences North, 90 per cent of serious cases have waited 14.5 hours, or 6.5 hours for less serious ones, as of the fall of 2011.

Additional challenges are expected with the impending closure of 30 ALC beds at the former Memorial site. McNeil said he's “absolutely” concerned the closure will impact emergency room wait times.

“That will be a very challenging for the system,” he said, adding that the hospital is now focusing on how it can provide services such as ambulatory care to patients to ensure they don't end up in the emergency room or an inpatient ward.

Cataract surgery is another area of concern.

The hospital is doing fairly well in other areas though.

The median wait time for cataract surgery between April and December 2011 was 62 days, a mere four days more than the provincial average, and the 90th percentile wait time is 166 days, versus the provincial average of 123 days.

McNeil said the problem is the province isn't providing enough funding to do these surgeries. He said the hospital actually performed more cataract surgeries than it had funding for last year.

“We have the need and the physicians willing to do the procedures,” he said. “We just need the money. It comes down to that.”

In terms of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) tests, the hospital is limited in how many of these scans it can do because it only has one MRI machine.

“With MRI, we've pretty much maxed out to be quite honest, because we have one MRI,” McNeil said. “We need to have two. We're trying to maximize opportunities to use that piece of equipment.”

The median wait time for an MRI for an admitted patient at Health Sciences North was two days last fall, as opposed to the provincial average of a one-day wait.

MRI wait times for Health Sciences North patients who haven't been admitted to the hospital are actually better than the provincial average. These patients wait 26 days, as opposed to the provincial average of 35 days.

Health Sciences North's wait times compare well to the provincial average in several areas, including hip and knee surgery, cardiac surgery, cardiac angioplasty and cardiac angiography.

Although hip and knee surgery wait times are still longer than the provincial average, McNeil said those differences are “marginal” compared to where they were a few years ago.

The median wait time at Health Sciences North is 107 days, and the 90th percentile wait is 225 days, as opposed to the provincial average of 77 days and 214 days.

About seven years ago, Health Sciences North decided to make hip and knee surgeries a priority, recruiting physicians and allocating them operating room time to perform these surgeries.

“If I go way back, we cut some of the wait times by half,” McNeil said, adding that several years ago, it wasn't unusual to wait more than 400 days for a hip or knee surgery.

“Wait times on hips and knees are an absolute success,” he said.

Posted by Arron Pickard