Officials with London Health Sciences Centre say the hospital network’s adult emergency departments are experiencing wait times of more than 15 hours for those with non-urgent and non-emergent concerns.
Those wait times are as of 4:45 p.m. Tuesday and come after emergency departments saw a brief spike in wait times that exceeded the 20-hour mark, according to a spokesperson for LHSC.
In a post to its website, patients are asked to “please come prepared to wait” and “consider packing a phone charger, water bottle, book, headphones and a snack.”
Just before 2 p.m. on Tuesday, the hospital network shared on Twitter that its adult emergency departments were experiencing wait times of more than 20 hours, but in an email to Global News, a spokesperson for LHSC says “due to the fluidity around patient flow, this has since decreased.”
“We’re committed to providing up-to-date and transparent information to the community and are working on a more consistent metric for sharing wait times publicly,” the spokesperson added.
The situation at LHSC’s adult emergency departments mirrors what’s been seen in other hospitals across Ontario in recent months.
A leaked Ontario Health report that was published last week showed emergency wait times across the province were worsening, with backlogs beginning even before a patient steps into a hospital.
LHSC is also grappling with staffing shortages that are consistent with nation-wide trends as medical professionals choose to retire or quit after more than two years of working during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In September, LHSC reported it had roughly 540 vacant nursing positions it needed to fill, including 442 for registered nurses and roughly 100 for registered practical nurses. The hospital network employs nearly 15,000 people.
In the meantime, LHSC is encouraging patients to seek non-emergency medical assistance options where possible, such as contacting a family doctor, visiting a walk-in clinic or going to an urgent care clinic.
— With files from Global’s Colin D’Mello and Matthew Trevithick.