Some Greater Toronto Area hospitals say they are experiencing a significant uptick in emergency room visits that began over the holidays and has continued into the first few days of 2017.
Lakeridge Health in Oshawa set up a command post on Tuesday as it struggled to deal with what it said was a “record number” of emergency room visits.
The hospital said that it has had up to 60 people in its emergency room awaiting beds in recent days with the higher than usual volume likely to continue for the “foreseeable future.”
Other hospitals across the GTA also reported heavier than usual wait times.
On Wednesday, officials at Trillium Health Partners in Mississauga said they have been experiencing an increase in emergency room traffic and that has prompted them to increase their staff levels, add additional beds and open a command centre.
Trillium Health Partners oversees Credit Valley Hospital, Mississauga Hospital and Queensway Health Centre.
“Over the past week we have had influenza outbreaks at two of our units and are experiencing higher volumes that usual with an average of 916 visits in the last two days to our three sites. In addition, over the last seven days we have had 68 lab confirmed cases of Influenza A, which is a higher than usual for our hospital,” Trillium Health Partners said in a written statement.
Though hospitals usually experience a higher than normal volume of emergency room patients at this time of year, several GTA facilities are reporting an uptick well beyond what they might usually see in January.
Officials at East York General Hospital told CP24 on Wednesday that it has seen about 232 emergency room patients a day over the last week, which equates to about 20 extra patients per day. A spokesperson for the University Health Network also said that emergency visits at its hospitals are up 20 per cent over the last two weeks due in part to an “increase in flu activity.”
“I think we have seen in the last few years the influence of the flu circulating around the holidays,” Toronto’s associate medical officer of health Dr. Michael Finkelstein told CP24 on Wednesday. “People coming together for the holidays, sharing hugs, touching surfaces that may be contaminated with the virus and then touching themselves and getting contaminated.”
Trend being seen across the country
Discussing the rise in patient volume with CP24, emergency room physician Dr. Brett Belchetz said it is a trend that is being observed right across the country.
“This is something we are hearing about across the GTA and also across the country. The Toronto area isn’t even the most hard-hit. We have been hearing that some of the western provinces are much more hard-hit than us,” he said. “That said across the GTA, including the hospitals I work at, we are seeing a tremendous spike in volumes coming into the emergency room over the last week or two.”
Belchetz said hospitals usually see a spike in emergency room visits over the holidays due to the fact that many other medical facilities, including doctor’s offices are closed.
He said the problem this year is that a bump in flu cases has “compounded” the problem and has left many hospitals struggling to deal with record patient volume.
“We are getting hit hard by the flu and it more so than we are used to seeing at this particular time and it comes right as we are struggling to clean up from the holidays,” he said.
Though many hospitals have reported a spike in ER visits, an official at Mount Sinai Hospital told CP24 that their patient volume over the last week is consistent with what they usually see during the holidays and is “nothing extraordinary.”
