Emergency department wait-times are being described as the canary in the coal mine for health system performance.
That from Andrew Longhurst, Senior Researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
A new analysis from the centre says the North Bay Regional Health Centre saw wait times for an emergency department assessment double over five years, with 90% of patients waiting 7.3 hours in 2024-25.
They also say the time it took to be admitted to the hospital from the ER increased 298% over five years, to just over 65 hours.
Calling it a preventable and deepening crisis, Longhurst says when hospital funding increases fall below the required six percent, the health care needs of the population go unmet.
“Over the last three years, our research shows that predictable increases in Ontario hospital costs are being met with consistent underfunding from the provincial government,” he says.
The report says the majority of Ontario’s 136 hospitals, including North Bay’s, have carried operational deficits since 2022.
Sharon Richer, secretary-treasurer of Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, the hospital division of CUPE, says the sharp increase in province-wide wait-times occurred before the latest round of hospital job cuts beginning at the end of last year, including 40 in North Bay.
“By any metric, our hospitals require a substantial increase in staffing and capacity to improve wait-times, reduce hallway medicine, and enhance the quality of patient care,” she says. “The political choice to starve our public hospitals is a failure by design.”
