Cambridge Memorial Hospital has done away with its online wait time clock as it explores other options to present more detailed information to patients seeking care.
In a statement to CambridgeToday, the hospital's manager of public affairs and communication Stephan Beckhoff said the complexity of determining wait times in the emergency department made the clock on the hospital's website unreliable.
Although the link to the clock features prominently on the website landing page, the link instead goes to a message informing patients that an update to the clock is in progress along with tips on seeking care and where to go if you're experiencing cold or flu symptoms.
"Emergency Department wait times are influenced by a number of factors and we are currently looking at ways to best represent this information to the public," Beckhoff said. "This past year, we found some of our processes made the clock unreliable and we took it off-line."
Determining wait times is based on a number of factors including the current numbers of patients in the waiting room and their overall acuity in terms of emergency measured against the hospital's capacity and staffing levels at that moment in time.
"All of these factors are complex and change constantly," Beckhoff said.
Wait times at CMH and all hospitals for that matter, have risen considerably in the wake of the pandemic peak as staffing levels dropped.
At one point last summer, seven patients were waiting for a bed as the hospital struggled to fill close to 250 staff vacancies and had close to 20 staff off due to COVID.
The latest numbers from Health Quality Ontario from November show average wait times for first assessment from a doctor in the emergency department was 3.3 hours. The average time people spent in emergency once admitted to hospital, however, was 31 hours, with only 17 per cent of patients admitted within the target eight hour wait time.
Beckhoff urges anyone seeking care at the CMH emergency department to explore other options for care before arriving.
"If the Emergency Department is the only option, patients will be seen and cared for in accordance to their condition with those needing priority care seen first," he said.
