A Kitchener woman is speaking out after what she calls an unreasonably long wait for emergency room care.
Cynthia Henderson crashed her car Friday in Kitchener. Her friend’s two kids were in the backseat, and they were fine, but Henderson was injured and was taken to hospital by ambulance.
She arrived at St. Mary’s General Hospital at about 4:45 p.m. Ten hours later, she was still waiting to be checked out by hospital staff.
“I never saw no one. No one came in to see me. I didn’t know what was going on,” Henderson tells CTV.
Officials at the hospital say long wait times are common, especially during flu season, but St. Mary’s is working hard to improve wait times.
“We’ve got a lot of different initiatives, everything from looking at the turnaround times [to] diagnostics to triage time,” says Sandra Hett, the hospital’s vice-president of patient services.
Incoming ER patients are prioritized based on a national triage scale.
“Patients that have a life-threatening, life and limb would be a one. The goal is that they’re seen immediately,” says Hett.
Across Ontario, the average time spent in emergency rooms is six hours for patients with complex conditions, or about 2.5 hours for patients with minor injuries.
After 10 hours of waiting, Henderson left St. Mary’s and checked into the ER at Grand River Hospital, where she was examined, put into a neck brace and released.
