Emergency Wait Lines

On February 10, 2009 the province revealed its plan to cutting waiting times and long stays in emergency departments, and a lack of access to family health care. The plan will include many policies such as:

Creating an online tool that would allow users to type in their postal code and find alternatives to emergency departments in their neighbourhoods.
Public reporting on time spent in hospital ERs on a health ministry website.
Setting of targets for individual hospitals on time spent in ERs.
Creation and expansion of community programs to help frail, elderly patients stay out of hospital.
Establishment of a Health Care Connect Program to connect patients with family health care providers in their community who are taking on new patients.
* Courtesy of source listed at end of Blog
According to the Ontario Health Department 9 out of the 10 patients spend 9.4 hours in emergency departments. For patients being admitted to hospital the wait is even longer. They spend 35 hours in the ER before being moved to a in-patient bed. "Waiting too long in an emergency department means there's a problem in the system that needs to be fixed," says Dr. Rakesh Kumar, chief of emergency at Humber River Regional Hospital. According to the Local Health Integration Networks in Ontario, approximately 50 percent of emergency visits are made by patients with non-urgent needs, or less urgent needs. The government will encourage these patients with less needs to seek urgent-care centres, walk-in clinics, or family health networks and doctors. According to the CEO of LHIN, the big causes of waits is that patients who do not really need to be in the emergency room are there.

Opinion:
In my opinion, I think that government should be proud of themselves, unveiling a plan now. I would have been happier with this decision if they had put this plan into action earlier, because long ER waits, have been a large problem in Toronto. There is proof that plan’s similar to this do work. In the article it mentions that the Trillium Health Centre has been recently been able to discharge frail, elderly patients thanks to a Restore plan they have put into place. It is a separate wing of the hospital where they’re long-term facilities available for the elderly. The Missasauga Life Care Centre put a program into place where patients are transferred upto 90 days to receive extensive physiotherapy and other support to help them regain strength and prepare them for their homelives.
I believe that if the government asks other hospitals to put similar programs into place in their hospitals, than the collective wait time in the emergency departments will be reduced.