The gains from 2014 to 2018 over time spent on a stretcher in the emergency room have faded in recent years. A key promise of the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) that raises criticism from the opposition.
When former Health Minister Gaétan Barrette appeared in the emergency room in 2014, the challenge was great.
More than one million patients spend an average of nearly 17 hours per year on a stretcher in the emergency room.
As the parliamentary leader of the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ), André Fortin, reminds us, we set up, among other things, a network of superclinics throughout Quebec, which, in my region, provided emergency room relief..
The current government has chosen to stop this development of superclinicshe continued with a press scrum on Tuesday.
Four years later, in 2018, the average length of stay on a stretcher dropped below 14 hours.
Once in the saddle in 2019, the new CAQ government aims to reach another 12 hours 30 minutes in 2022 and 12 hours in 2023.
However, according to data made public by the Ministry of Health and Social Services (MSSS), the average length of stay on a stretcher in the Quebec emergency room increased last year by 51 minutes, to reach 16 hours. 45 minutes.
A level similar to 2014.
In addition, approximately twenty hospitals have an average length of stay on a stretcher of more than 20 hours.
Emergency room attendance rose last year after a dramatic decline in the first year of the pandemic to more than 3.3 million total visits, but this level remains 10% lower than before the pandemic.
In his plan to “restore” the health network over the next few years, the Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, provides a reduction of waiting time in the emergency room by adding hospital beds and better management of beds, especially by setting up command centers.
His Finance colleague, Eric Girard, allocated his budget $ 33.8 million in 2026-2027 [...] to increase fluidity in emergencies and hospitals.
According to the parliamentary leader of Québec solidaire, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, it’s systemic in the CAQ, they can’t deliver the goods when they promise the Quebecers that they will improve the health system.
There are small solutions we can apply here and there to improve things or to despair [...] but the horse medicine our system needs is change in prevention so that people don’t get sickhe continued.
According to Dr. Judy Morris, president of the Quebec Association of Emergency Physicians, we knew we lacked beds, we lacked staff; COVID exacerbated this situation, it exposed this problem more quickly, but, yes, there were problems at the management level.
In the opinion of Dereck Cyr, interim president of the Union of Nurses, Respiratory Therapists and Auxiliary Nurses of Laval (SIIIAL-CSQ), it is necessary to take patients on the stretcher who are in the emergency room and must be hospitalized.
Of the 72 patients in the Cité-de-la-Santé emergency room, about twenty are waiting to climb to the top for the hospital, due to staff shortages.he explains.
Source: Radio-Canada
