Even at the best of times, wait times at emergency rooms in the Lower Mainland can be long, and Thursday was no exception.
Wait times at hospitals including Vancouver General and Abbotsford Regional Hospital hovered around the four-hour mark all day.
But at one point Thursday, the wait time at Surrey Memorial Hospital’s emergency department, Canada’s second largest, was nearly eight hours.
“Having these long wait times does not bode well for our health care system,” Surrey South BC Conservative MLA told GLobal News.
“We need to completely overhaul our system put patients first and get rid of these long wait times.”
By the afternoon the situation had improved considerably and the wait was more or less in line with several other regional hospitals.
But critics say the system is on the verge of collapse and needs rapid interventions.
“It’s not just frustrating it’s scary,” said Dr. Claudine Storeness-Bliss, a Surrey Memorial physician and BC United candidate for Surrey-Cloverdale.
“I hear it all the time, patients tell me, ‘I was going to go to the hospital but I don’t want to wait eight hours there,’ they have a small infection and now it’s septic it’s dangerous.”
In a statement, Fraser Health said “higher than average volumes of patients have been presenting to our Emergency Departments and more of these patients are requiring admission.”
Health Minister Adrian Dix acknowledged the system is facing challenges.
“Because when we’ve increased medical staff by 26 per cent our population has increased by 17 per cent that’s 800,000 more people since I become minister of health,” he said.
Over the B.C. Day long weekend, the emergency room at White Rock’s Peace Arch Hospital averted closure at the 11th hour. Had it closed and needed to divert patients, more pressure would have been put on Surrey Memorial.
“This is a crisis that we’re in and yet we have a health care minister and a premier who refuse to treat it like the crisis that it is,” Sturko said.