On Tuesday alone, 236 people visited the emergency department at the Halifax Infirmary. “People come in and wait and get frustrated, and rightfully so, and then leave and try and secure health care elsewhere,” Magee said, “or they present (in the ER) the next day to see if they can get seen.” While the target is two per cent or less, the percentage of people registered at the Halifax Infirmary ER who have left without being seen has exceeded 20 per cent on some days, Magee said. This pressure and the resulting delays have led to many more people than usual leaving the ER without being seen. Provincewide, 1,810 people went to the ER on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Nova Scotia Health released the latest in a series of public advisories that people should expect unusually long wait times.Īccording to the recently launched public reporting website on health data, 236 people registered at the Halifax Infirmary ER on Tuesday and 143 at the IWK Health Centre emergency department. People waiting for nursing home beds often occupy more than 100 acute-care beds at the infirmary. “At times the number exceeds 45,” said Magee, who has worked in emergency medicine for over 20 years. “The demand is exceeding our capacities at record levels so what that means is that the beds in our department are by and large occupied by patients that are either admitted to hospital or are in the process of being admitted to hospital.”Īt the Halifax Infirmary ER, more than 40 of its 45 beds are often occupied. “Emergency departments are facing tremendous pressures that we really haven’t seen before,” said Magee, chief of emergency medicine for Nova Scotia Health’s central zone, in an interview Wednesday. These days the combination of factors such as people without doctors (the official number broke 100,000 this week), seniors waiting for long-term care in hospitals, built-up demand from the pandemic and staffing shortages related to COVID-19 and burnout have driven the situation into crisis mode. Emergency departments regularly bear the brunt of gaps in other parts of the health-care system as the “canary in the coal mine,” as Dr.
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