More people in the Windsor, Chatham and Sarnia regions are using the emergency department when they don’t need to.
Data from the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and the provincial Ministry of Health presented to the Erie St. Clair Local Health Integration Network earlier this week show that for every 100 residents in the Erie St. Clair region, 18.6 emergency room visits aren’t true emergencies and could have been dealt with in a clinic, doctor’s office or similar primary care setting.
Another quarter of the ER visits were actual emergencies, while the rest were conditions somewhere in between.
Jennifer Rayner, a London-based epidemiologist who compiled the stats for the LHIN, said this trend could be explained by a number of factors, such as the availability of primary care in the community or convenience.
When it comes to unnecessary ER visits, the Ontario average is about 15 per cent for every 100 residents. Another 20 per cent of ER visits in Ontario overall are actual emergencies.
Rayner said the ministry is working to make emergency room alternatives more available to the public.
For example, the LHIN is phasing in a new program called Health Links which is meant to divert patients from emergency departments by getting them more access to primary care and other health care services outside the hospital. Health care providers in Chatham will pilot the Health Links strategy first before the LHIN rolls it out to the Windsor and Sarnia areas.
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