Here’s how long emergency room patients are waiting at local hospitals

The average Ontario emergency room patient waited a record-breaking two hours and six minutes to see a doctor in May of this year.

In Waterloo region, people waited even longer.

According to Health Quality Ontario, average wait times across the province increased from 1.9 hours in April to 2.1 hours in May.

Patients who were admitted to hospital spent an average of 20.1 hours in the ER before getting a bed in a ward.

Locally, emergency room patients at Cambridge Memorial Hospital waited an average of 2.9 hours to see a doctor in May. At Grand River Hospital, the average wait time was 2.7 hours, at St. Mary’s General it was 2 hours. That’s compared to 2.8 hours at Guelph General.

Several hospitals also publish real-time wait times on their websites:

• Grand River Hospital
• St. Mary’s General Hospital
• Cambridge Memorial Hospital:

WALK-IN CLINIC WAIT TIMES

According to Medimap, a Canadian tech company that posts walk-in clinic wait-times online, clinic wait times in Kitchener are roughly in line with the rest of the province, with most being around 20 minutes.

However, Medimap vice-president of operations Teddy Wickland says that’s “highly variable depending on when and where you’re searching” in the city.

Wickland said part of Medimap’s goal is to steer patients who could be better cared for in a walk-in clinic away from ERs.

“The type of patients who should go to the emergency room are having some type of very serious, generally acute issues, it could be kidney failure, it could be a gunshot wound,” Wickland said.

“Walk-in clinics are a great way for patients to still get on-demand care that’s more appropriate for things like the sniffles if you need a COVID test, something like that.”

Ultimately, however, Wickland says technology can’t solve the larger systemic issues behind long wait times, like healthcare staffing shortages.

“There is a family doctor shortage,” Wickland said. “The only thing that can solve for that – technology can help – but is frankly, is more people.”