The Canadian health care system is a major topic of interest when we go south of the border. As we just had a new experience with it, I thought I'd share. [Again, please understand that I am saying nothing - good or bad - about the American health care system. I am simply sharing a part of our life in Canada.]
Friday evening John & I decided to take Helena to the ER. She'd been acting unlike herself for days, had had a fever for almost 48 hours, and seemed to be getting less relief with each new dose of Tylenol.
We walked in the ER doors at 6:40. The triage nurse checked Helena's vitals, gave her more Tylenol, and told us it would be a 1 to 3 hour wait. The first 2 hours went by quickly. The third stretched on and on while we started to recognize the different characters from the Disney Junior commercials, as we'd already watched their shows. At exactly 3 hours, John went up and asked how much longer we'd be waiting. The answer, "Helena's name is next in her area."
What did "her area" mean? After 50 minutes of waiting to find out, I asked how much longer it would be. "Her name should be called soon."
And so it was ten minutes later. We saw a doctor within a couple minutes of being put in a room, Helena was checked out, it was determined she just had a virus, and we were sent into an in-progress waiting room to rehydrate her with Pedialyte for the next hour so that her vitals could be checked again. By the time she was discharged, it was 12:15.
If you do the math, that means we were at the ER for 5.5 hours.
FIVE AND A HALF HOURS.
According to the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care in December 2011, our wait was only 45 minutes longer than the average ER visit to this hospital for a minor condition. And when we asked the nurse if the night was particularly busy, she looked at us with a quizzical look and answered, "No, actually tonight we're a bit slow."
It's not just here in Toronto. In 2008, a man died in a Manitoba ER after waiting 34 hours. In a quick google search, I found recent articles from Vancouver, Ottowa, and Toronto discussing the crowds in the ER. Perhaps my friend said it best in an email about our visit:
"That's Canada...sorry. ERs in Canada are the worst place to be in Canada... it's a huge Canadian issue and has been for quite some time...5 1/2 hours is actually pretty good. :("
