July 30th, 2024
Temporary Emergency Department Closures and Accessing Care
Last July, Patient Ombudsman’s blog highlighted the issue of temporary closures in hospital emergency departments. One year later, and this issue continues to be a concern for communities needing access to emergency services and a challenge for hospitals dealing with staffing issues.
In December 2023, the Auditor General of Ontario‘s audit on emergency departments reported there had been more than 200 temporary emergency department closures between July 2022 and June 2023. And in January 2024, the Rural Ontario Municipal Association released a report that looked at challenges accessing health care in rural Ontario that noted 867 temporary emergency department closures between January and November 2023 (inclusive), as per a study by the Northern Ontario School of Medicine.
In June 2024 alone, our office noted media reports of temporary closures for emergency departments at Almonte General Hospital, the Chesley site of South Grey Bruce Health Centre, Listowel Wingham Hospital Alliance and St. Marys Memorial Hospital, as well as a temporary closure of the obstetrics unit at Collingwood General and Marine Hospital due to staffing shortages.
As seen in our most recent annual report, Patient Ombudsman received more than 350 complaints in 2022/23 about experiences in emergency departments, a 17% increase over the previous year. These complaints focused on concerns about delays, the quality of assessments, diagnostics and treatment, poor communication and a lack of sensitivity and caring. Our current data shows that almost one in five complaints to our office about public hospitals in 2023/24 were about experiences in emergency departments.
Last year, our blog focused on what patients and hospitals can do to lessen the chances of a negative experience and focused largely on communication: sharing information about expected wait times and alternatives for non-urgent needs; communicating with courtesy and respect; and ensuring patients know who to speak to about concerns or worsening symptoms. The guidance we provided in last year’s blog as well as in several past annual reports focuses on ensuring patients are treated fairly when faced with long wait times and other challenges in emergency departments.
We continue to support the need for good communication; at the same time, Patient Ombudsman is concerned about the ongoing issue of closed or reduced hours/services at Ontario hospitals, which limits patients’ access to care when they need it most and can potentially lead to safety risks.
Access to care is essential and the significant, ongoing issues that we see both in the complaints to our office about emergency departments and in media reports of reduced services are ones we will continue to monitor and report on in the months ahead.