Patients are spending less time waiting to be admitted to Guelph General Hospital.
The hospital issued a news release on Tuesday, announcing that they have reduced the amount of time to off-load patients who were transported to the hospital by ambulance.
Last October, the hospital said the average delay was 4.9 hours. They say that has dropped an average of 42 minutes this past June.
“We’ve got an amazing relationship (with the Guelph-Wellington Paramedic Services) between our teams and our leadership,” said Melissa Skinner, the hospital’s vice-president of patient services and chief nursing executive.
“We’ve been coming together, meeting frequently to come up with ways to work differently to help each other.”
Off-load delays at hospitals in Ontario has been a hot-button political issue over the past year with news about scores of ambulances lined up at entrances waiting to drop off patients. Some have cited a shortage of staff available to handle the influx of patients.
Skinner said while that was one factor for the delays at the hospital, the main reason was the number of patients that were being admitted to the hospital have increased over the past year and there was not enough space to handle it.
“People were coming in for a viral illness or other health issues, pretty soon our emergency department was overwhelmed,” Skinner said.
“The emergency department was made for about 40,000 visits a year and last year, we were seeing close to 60,000.”
In addition to the collaboration between the hospital and paramedic services, there are plans to hire a new offload nurse and the redevelopment of space in the hospital’s emergency department in order to further cut down wait times for patients.
“We are really pleased with the collaborative effort between paramedics and hospital staff,” said Stephen Dewar, chief of Guelph-Wellington Paramedic Services.
“With these improvements to processes, our skilled teams can now spend more time responding to calls.”
The reduction in off-load delays means doctors and nurses can focus on treating patients at the hospital.
“Everyone is feeling a lot less distressed,” Skinner said. “We come into work everyday to provide the best possible care, and it is very distressing when we don’t have the space to do that.”
Hospital officials say staff and emergency services partners will continue to monitor and adapt as required in a dedicated effort to continue to keep off-load times to a minimum.
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