E-R Issues Focus of Huddle

By 250 News

Representatives from the Northern Health Authority have come home from a day of talks about how to reduce wait times in emergency rooms.  The Emergency Room Doctors group of the BCMA presented a plan which called for a two hour limit between emergency treatment and being admitted to hospital.  The Ministry of Health won’t commit to that short a time frame, but has agreed to have staff visit emergency rooms to get a first hand  look at the situation.

The two hour time frame is just a fraction of the goal Prince George Regional Hospital is trying to reach.  It has a service contract with the Ministry of Health which calls for patients to be admitted (if need be) within 10 hours. It is a target the hospital meets about 60 – 65% of the time.

The Chairman of the Emergency Group at PGRH, Dr. J.B. Burg says “We have been working on trying to reduce wait list times for some time in the Emergency and so while the meeting in Vancouver to discuss the issue was good, our position is to make sure that the flow is good at PGRH and to make it work. If the flow is good in and out, that is what we are trying to achieve.”

Burg says around the world wait list times are not clear. “In Britain a good wait list time is eight hours, while Ontario also uses the eight hour wait list time. I’m more interested in getting the patient through and getting the work done in the best manner possible.”  Burg says if you achieve that, then it becomes the number your looking for.

It has been a month since the Ministry of Health announced $7 million dollars in funding to reduce the pressure on emergency rooms at 14 hospitals throughout the province. 

Every year, PGRH treats 50 thousand patients through Emergency.  About 9 % (13 -15 patients a day) will need to be admitted.  It has already taken some steps to ease the congestion including:

-increasing service at the Fourth Avenue clinic so it can provide primary health care

-added an additional operating room

-developed a special plan to handle those times when there is extra demand on the E-R  (for instance flu season or major trauma cases)

Staff has already been looking at how they can improve the time it takes for lab, diagnostic tests and discussions with specialists. 

There is more to the E.R. than wait times says Burg, “You have got to look at all the stuff around that effects the flow of patients through the Emergency, its not just one fix for all.  We at the Emergency at PGRH want to put a system in place that works and that’s what we want in the long run.”

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