‘It’s insane’: Ontario MD outraged by mother’s wait in HSC emergency department

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This article was published 05/01/2024 (656 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When her elderly mother faced an estimated 30-hour ER wait at Health Sciences Centre, an Ontario physician sprang into advocacy mode.

Dr. Joy Hataley, an emergency department physician and anesthetist in Ontario, harnessed the power of social media to raise the alarm about long wait times in Winnipeg.

It’s something Hataley said she wishes wasn’t necessary. Ultimately, her mother was seen by an ER doctor within 13 hours and was headed home with a prescription in hand at the 17-hour mark.

By then, Hataley had reached out to her networks of doctors across Canada, posted about the situation on LinkedIn and X (formerly Twitter), phoned HSC several times and consulted with the on-duty ER doctor about her mother’s care.

She said she’s fortunate she’s in a position to advocate for her family, but Canadians should find the wait times unacceptable.

“I don’t like the vulnerability that this sheds on my family,” Hataley said. “My family is very private. I don’t like highlighting this situation. I don’t like having to go to social media to try and solve a problem for my family, but the reality is, I feel I have a responsibility.

“If you see it, you gotta say something about it. Or who do we become if we just put our heads down?”

Winnipeg’s ER wait times are higher now than they were at any other point over the past decade, according to the most recent median wait time figures released by the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority for November.

The median wait was 3.57 hours in November at hospitals across Winnipeg. Waits increased for adult patients at all Winnipeg emergency departments and urgent-care centres since November 2022.  Children’s Hospital was the only site to log a decrease in wait times compared to last year.

While high, HSC’s adult ER median wait time of nearly four hours was one of the lowest wait times recorded in the city. Median waits at St. Boniface and Grace hospitals were highest at more than five hours.

The 90th-percentile wait time for all Winnipeg hospitals was 10.8 hours in November 2023, up slightly from 10.38 hours in November 2022.

The impact of long wait times goes far beyond individual health, Hataley said. She said she believes reorganization of Canada’s health-care system is part of the solution, as is re-engaging fed-up health-care workers who found work elsewhere. If she’d had to travel to Winnipeg to get her mother the care she needed, for example, Hataley’s patients in Ontario would’ve been left in the lurch.

“When we have these prolonged wait times, it takes our society down,” she said. “We become less productive, and this isn’t a one-off. This is happening en masse, across our country.”

Hataley’s 86-year-old mother, who lives in Winnipeg, was taken to the ER by ambulance Monday because her nose wouldn’t stop bleeding and she needed treatment.

The bleeding started at about 7 a.m. About 12 hours later, Hataley’s parents called her and she spent about 45 minutes on a video call trying virtually everything she could from afar to stanch the flow.

Her mother arrived at the ER at about 8 that night. She was seen by a doctor the next morning, but not before she got frustrated with the wait and wandered out of the department, wanting her husband to pick her up. Hataley called HSC security, who found her mother headed down a hallway in a wheelchair and returned her to the ER.

Hataley was in regular contact with the ER nurses, and, later, the ER doctor, who was communicative and deferential about her mother’s treatment plan.

“When we have these prolonged wait times, it takes our society down.”–Dr. Joy Hataley

She said her mother got excellent care, even with a full waiting room.

“The nurses were great. I’m surprised they always had her recent vital signs, they always knew what was happening with her,” she said.

However, the idea that a 17-hour ER visit is a good outcome is “insane,” Hataley said.

“I still think it’s ridiculous that anyone would ever have to wait that sort of time period for care, but it is the reality of our system and it’s not the fault of the people working in the system,” she said. “They are just doing their best to cope.”

Hataley worked at Concordia Hospital for about five years, until 2000. At that time, it wasn’t unusual for patients to wait six to eight hours in the emergency department, which was closed by the former provincial government in 2019 and replaced with an urgent-care clinic.

A patient who presented to the ER in circumstances similar to her mother’s, Hataley said, would likely be assessed as mid-acuity, needing care at triage level 3 or 4.

Level 5 patients, including those with non-life-threatening injuries, wait the longest. In a well-functioning health-care system, a four-hour ER visit would be much more reasonable for someone who needed that level of care, she suggested.

“We’re talking about 17 hours, and we’re thinking that’s good. We’re happy she got out within 17 hours,” she said.

“It’s insane.”

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca