PRH Developing Innovative Solutions

To Reduce ER Wait Times

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 25, 2009

PEMBROKE – The Pembroke Regional Hospital hopes the implementation

of several strategies, including the creation of transitional care beds for
patients awaiting long-term care placement, will help to reduce higher-than-
average emergency department wait times for people presenting to the
emergency department (ED) with complex conditions.

Last week, for the first time, the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care
began publicly reporting emergency department (ED) lengths of stay (LOS)
for all medium and high volume hospitals in the province.

In Eastern Ontario, the Pembroke Regional Hospital had the third highest
emergency department wait times for complex conditions at 27.8 hours,
more than double the provincial average of 13.5 hours. For people coming
to the emergency with more minor conditions, the wait time at PRH was at
the provincial average of 4.6 hours, slightly exceeding the provincial target
of 4 hours.

“Not surprisingly, our ED wait times for complex conditions are much
higher than the baseline due, in large part, to the number of our beds
occupied by alternate level of care (ALC) patients,” said Hospital President
and CEO Pierre Noel. "These wait times represent the time that the sickest
of our patients wait from the time they arrive in the emergency department
until admission to a bed or discharge and, while much of this time is
productive time accessing and interpreting various tests, some of the time
is spent simply waiting for a bed to become available" said Mr. Noel.

Currently, on average, 25 of the Hospital’s 71 acute medical beds are

occupied by patients awaiting long-term care placement and are not
available for new admissions from the emergency department.

As well as causing long wait times for complex patients, the constant over-
occupancy of medical beds leads to medical patients occupying beds in
other acute and non-acute programs and, at times, the cancellation of
surgical cases.

Mr. Noel said that while, clearly, the wait times in emergency are longer
than anyone would like and they have been presenting challenges at the
Hospital for some time now, improvements are being made and several
strategies are being explored to help decrease them.

1
One of these strategies is the development of 30 transitional care beds to
be operated by Marianhill in renovated space at the Marguerite Centre. To
be cost-shared by PRH and the Champlain Local Health Integration
Network (LHIN), final approval of the proposal is expected this week.
If approved, Mr. Noel said 16 ALC patients could be transferred within three
months and an additional 14 could be moved about three months later.

“This initiative would fundamentally change the situation in the Hospital,

alleviating bed pressures and improving flow between our emergency
department and our inpatient units,” Mr. Noel said.

Dr. Michael Ferri, the Hospital's Chief of Staff, said other factors are
contributing to the higher wait times including a shortage of family
physicians in the area, the age and condition of the population being
served and the complexity of patients presenting to an active regional
centre.

“While we are taking steps to improve the situation, the challenges we are
facing are complex and can’t be solved overnight. In the meantime we want
to thank our patients and their families for enduring some of the longer
wait times and we want to thank our staff and physicians for providing
exceptional care and compassion, often in crowded conditions,” Dr. Ferri
said.

Mr. Noel concluded that, "No one likes to wait longer than necessary to
receive the care they need and we certainly will be doing everything in our
power to ensure that the people of our area receive high quality emergency
care in a timely way."

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:

Carolyn Levesque
Public Affairs and Communications Coordinator
(613) 732-3675, ext. 6165 / carolyn.levesque@pemreghos.org