Canadians will wait more than ever in emergency rooms in 2021

canadians hospitalized According to the latest data from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHI), more people will be waiting in emergency rooms in 2021 than in any previous year.

Nine out of 10 emergency department visits for admitted patients in the 12 months to March 31 were completed within 40.7 hours, data published online this month showed. That’s up from 33.5 hours last year.

In British Columbia, 90% of such visits were completed within 47.7 hours in 2021-22, compared to 32.8 hours the year before, while in Ontario, 90% of emergency department visits for admitted patients were completed within 32.5 hours, higher than 29.1. In Alberta, 90 per cent of jobs were completed within 27 hours, up slightly from 26.2 hours last year.

These figures come from hospitals that submit data to the National Ambulatory Care Reporting System (NACRS). However, cross-jurisdictional comparisons should be interpreted with caution. For example, in British Columbia, there are 30 facilities reporting to NACRS in 2021-22, representing an estimated 73% of emergency department coverage, while Ontario has 178 facilities, representing approximately all coverage.

data reflect a crisis Play in hospitals across Canada.Staffing Issues, Barriers to Accessing Primary Care, and Persistent Pressure on Healthcare Systems Further strain of pandemic leads to worsening illness Patients who end up in an emergency.

A children’s hospital in Vancouver is twin patient To accommodate growing numbers of sick kids, another Calgary man opens a heated trailer To accommodate the overflow, patients in Edmonton have been corridor crowded hospital. Many emergency departments across the country had to close due to severe staff shortages.

Nicole Loreti, project lead for the CIHI Clinical Management Database, said the release of the data is intended to foster discussion and support provinces and territories in exploring best practices and opportunities to improve their healthcare systems.

“Our release mainly includes [emergency department] Traffic, dwell time, various failures; it doesn’t take into account factors that affect dwell time,” she said. “But we know there can be many factors because dwell time is a complex issue. So it could be related to the complexity of the patient, how many patients there are, whether they need to be hospitalized, or it could be related to factors outside of the hospital, such as access to primary care or virtual care, or long-term care. “

The data also shows that there will be 2.4 million more emergency department visits across Canada in 2021-22 compared to the previous year, an increase of about 20.4 per cent. According to CIHI, this may be because during the first year of the pandemic, people avoided going to the hospital for less urgent situations and experienced fewer accidents and other illnesses due to restrictive public health measures.

About 14 million visits in 2021-22 are still slightly below pre-pandemic levels; in the two years before the pandemic, there were about 15 million visits a year nationwide.

The recent increase in visits has been particularly pronounced among infants and young children. In 2021-22, 1,038,994 children under the age of 4 will be admitted to emergency departments – an 83% increase from the previous year (567,073) and close to the pre-pandemic number.

Ms Loreti said the top three issues mentioned on admission were abdominal and pelvic pain, throat and chest pain and back pain, which was consistent with previous years. However, COVID-19 is now the fourth most common cause, up from tenth the previous year.

“It’s increased a lot, and acute upper respiratory infection is back to No. 7,” she said. “I think it has to do with changing public health measures in relation to the pandemic and the resurgence of infections.”