Ontario is renewing funding that helps rural and northern hospitals bolster emergency room staffing through the summer, but says the program will end after this year. Health Minister Sylvia Jones has touted that the program helped avoid nearly 1,500 temporary ER closures last summer, but while it expired on March 31, she did not announce…

A Nova Scotia woman is organizing a rally to call on the provincial government to improve the health-care system in response to the recent deaths of two women, who passed away after extensive wait times at local emergency departments. Jennifer MacDonald, a resident of Sydney on Cape Breton Island, said she is organizing the rally out…

Quebec is expanding a call-in service that allows parents to book urgent medical appointments for sick children, in an effort to reduce emergency room visits. Health Minister Christian Dubé says the 811 appointment-booking service for children—currently available in Montreal and neighbouring regions—will now be available provincewide. Dubé told reporters today during a visit to a…

Close to 14 million Canadians visited an emergency room between April 2021 and March 2022 and those patients faced increased wait times at hospitals across the country, according to data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). The data released by CIHI on Dec. 8 shows that 90 percent of emergency department visits for…

In a pair of September studies, Yale researchers found that emergency department crowding has been reaching crisis levels, compromising patient safety and access to care.  Between the start of 2017 and the end of 2021, the median rate of patients who left the emergency department (ED) without being seen by a clinician had doubled from…

Inside the emergency department at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Michigan, staff members were struggling to care for patients who are showing up much sicker than they’ve ever seen. Tiffani Dusang, the emergency room’s (ER) nursing director, practically vibrated with pent-up anxiety, looking at patients lying on a long line of stretchers pushed up against the…

You don’t feel well, have a low-grade temperature of 100.2, achy muscles, mild back pain, mild headache, it really burns when you pee. Emergency room (ER) or urgent care? Not only can the quality of your care depend on what you decide, but also the cost. If you have a regular physician, then a simple…

Heat-related emergency room visits in the Pacific Northwest region surged at the end of June, when states including Oregon and Washington were gripped by a record-breaking heatwave, according to a new report (pdf) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As all-time temperature records were shattered in the Pacific Northwest, the mean daily number…