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By Derek Craddock

ER VISITS

Length of stay in Saskatchewan emergency departments on the rise: report

Dec 15, 2022 | 5:00 PM

Saskatchewan residents spent more time in the emergency department at hospitals this past year compared to previous years.

That is coming from data released last week by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) through the National Ambulatory Care Reporting System (NACRS).

The report looked at the median number of hours patients spend at the emergency department along with some of the highest number of hours.

Saskatchewan had the second lowest when it came to length of stay, with an average stay of three hours. The highest amount recorded was around 10.1 hours.

Manitoba led the country with an average of 5.2 hours and the 90^th percentile at 20.6 hours. The national average is 3.6 hours.

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For Prince Albert specifically, the data for the Victoria Hospital and Regional Mental Health Centre showed nine out of 10 visits to the emergency department for admitted patients were completed within 10.7 hours in that time frame.

For the Battlefords Union Hospital, the 90^th percentile was 12.8 hours in emergency.

Nicole Loreti is the Program Lead for the Clinical Administrative Databases Operations with CIHI and said there were a couple of metrics they looked at when analyzing the data including the total volume of visits to the ER.

“The total visit volume increased from the previous year,” she said. “We see the volumes creeping back up, almost, not quite, but approaching pre-pandemic volumes.”

She added the previous year’s data came from the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic when restrictions kept millions of people at home. The data they released on Dec. 8 was taken up to March of this year, with the rest of 2022 expected in a report in February.

Loreti said it is likely those numbers will remain steady or increase when that report comes up.

She added the reasons behind the high numbers are complex and could relate to anything from healthcare shortages, to the needs of the patient and the community the hospital is in.

“Access to primary care in the community, access to virtual care, access to long-term care so patients can flow through the hospitals,” she said.

Meanwhile, the Health Sciences Association of Saskatchewan (HSAS) which represents hundreds of workers in hospitals say they’re seeing these numbers firsthand.

President Karen Wasylenko said the issue is not just restricted to the emergency department as when workers leave one area, the hospital and the system, in general, are strained.

She used the example of paramedics transporting a patient to emergency but are stuck because the patient is waiting.

“If they are in ER, they aren’t available to respond to other calls, which then causes problems because then there’s, on a daily basis throughout the province, ambulances never move because the paramedics aren’t there to staff them.”

So, what needs to change? According to Wasylenko, the province needs to address staffing and make significant changes.

“The system needs funding. The system needs that support because at this pace it can’t operate at its current pace without some solution to address this.”

Loreti is hopeful the numbers will push for change to prevent them from increasing year-over-year.

“We hope that our data that we’re releasing can help provide some insights and some monitoring to the metrics around lengths of stay to be used as a catalyst for discussions in identifying areas for improvements, ultimately to improve the healthcare system.”

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derek.craddock@pattisonmedia.com

Twitter: @PA_Craddock