Wait times in Windsor emergency rooms are some of the longest in the province, and a local health organization is trying things never attempted before to reverse the trend.
Dr. David Ng, emergency department lead for the Erie St. Clair Local Health Integration Network (LHIN), addressed the organization's board in Chatham Wednesday.
"The ERs are becoming overloaded and are unable to off-load the ambulances," Ng said. "So often ambulances get stuck waiting outside emergency room departments not able to off-load patients, which leads to fewer ambulances in the community. There are times where there is significant delay to get an ambulance, and we see this as a crisis."
Ng added the ambulances can't offload a patient without an available bed.
He said there are standards for emergency response times, and EMS members try their best to adhere to them, but those brief periods where ambulances are not available are getting more regular.
Ng added they are starting a pilot project in Windsor which will track all the ambulances and their status from when they get called, to when they offload the patient, and everything in between.
"By having that knowledge before the patient arrives, we can make room in the ER, or prepare for the ambulance to show up," Ng said. "It's almost like knowing where the ball is going to be hit on a baseball field. It's very exciting and it is real-time. I think it is one of the first pilot projects of its kind in Ontario for this software."
Ng added the population is aging, and their health problems are becoming more complex. He said those factors combined with fewer beds and less staff is causing many ERs, and hospitals in general, to become overcrowded.
Another pilot project is a real-time report that will tell the LHIN the status of all the beds in every facility in the entire system. It will show the organization how many people are waiting for a bed, how many beds are available, how many patients are waiting to be discharged, and how many are going to see long-term care.
"So having an eye in the sky, a telemetry look, will give us real-time information to tell us where to move our resources to maintain flow in the system," Ng said. "Before this, we were essentially blind and not knowing where everything was. There's no hiding information. Everything is out in the open."
According to Ng, ERs being packed with people who do not need to be there, is largely a myth. He said 85 per cent of people in Windsor who go to an emergency room are in need of emergency services.
Ng said Windsor-Essex hospitals are in the 90th percentile when it comes to wait times across the province.