ER wait time almost 2 hours longer in Regina than Saskatoon: report

Watch above: CIHI report on Sask. medicine

REGINA – We’re not as healthy as we could be in Saskatchewan, according to a new website tool from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).

The report breaks down the Canadian health care system and allows the public to view information about hospitals, health regions and provinces. It shows emergency wait times remain a problem in Saskatchewan.

“The progress is slow when you’re dealing with a really complex problem,” said Mark Wyatt. “You have a backlog of patients in the hospitals and you don’t have available beds. That’s where the bottleneck often occurs.”

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However, what stands out in the CIHI report is that people in Regina spend significantly more time, on average, waiting for ER care than people in Saskatoon.

In the Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region (RQHR), the average wait time is 4.3 hours, whereas in the Saskatoon Health Region (SHR), it’s 2.4 hours. The Canadian average is 3.2 hours.

“We seemed to have plateaued a bit in the improvement area and we need to dig through the numbers again to see where we need to go next,” said Keith Dewar, CEO and president of RQHR.

Dewar said the two health regions have different resources and the RQHR is in the process of learning what might be working better in Saskatoon.

“They have more physicians, consultants accessible to them in the emergency departments that helps in that assessment and processing of their patients,” said Dewar.

The report also illustrates that the life expectancy is a year and a half shorter in Saskatchewan than the Canadian average. Also, more people smoke and are obese.

Denise Dick, the first vice president of the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses (SUN) said it’s about better access to primary health care, which would help us stay healthier, live longer, and in turn, out of the ER.

“If we don’t have access to medications, if we don’t have access to any of these basic things that people need to live, their life expectancy is going to be shorter,” said Dick. “It comes down to all of that.”