Saskatoon’s emergency rooms not meeting national standards: report

SASKATOON – ER patients are not seeing doctors soon enough, and not being checked on regularly according to a provincial auditor’s report.

“We found that the physical layout of the emergency departments was confusing and frustrating to patients, resulting in some waiting longer, and some leaving the departments before they receive care,” said Provincial Auditor Judy Ferguson.

Ferguson said Saskatoon’s emergency rooms aren’t up to snuff.

“We found that the Saskatoon Regional Health Authority did not have effective processes to triage patients in its three full-service emergency departments,” the auditor explained.

According to Ferguson, ER patients are waiting up to 25 minutes for their conditions to be assessed. The auditor found that wait times were being tracked not from the patients’ time through the doors, but from their triage.

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“This means that the authority is reporting shorter than actual emergency wait time,” Ferguson said.

“To have our clock start ticking, we have to physically register that individual, put that record into place. That’s what happens with the registration process. So if you look across, no one has mastered that one,” said Sandra Blevins, vice president of Saskatoon Health Region Integrated Health Services.

“Our goal is to have no wait though,” she explained.

The Saskatoon Health Region said it’s working hard to meet all eight of the auditor’s recommendations.

Health officials are even looking at knocking down a wall at Royal University Hospital so nurses can see into the waiting room.

“The recommendations all made sense, and they’re all targeted to work we have underway. So if you look at the flow of a patient, they hit each of those target points correctly,” Blevins said.

The health region also said it will ensure there are more frequent checkups on patients in emergency rooms.

The Children’s Hospital of Saskatchewan is expected to open in 2017, and the health region said new adult and pediatric ER rooms there will also help eliminate wait times in Saskatoon.