Montreal sees spike in ER deaths and hospitals are grossly over capacity

New numbers show a spike in emergency room deaths, as the length of stay in Montreal ERs is the highest of any province.

The ER at the Royal Victoria Hospital is at 191 per cent occupancy rate and on Monday the average length of stay for people waiting on a stretcher was 16 hours and 15 minutes.

Out of 21 emergency rooms on the Island of Montreal – 13 ERs are at 100 per cent capacity and above – according to Tuesday’s numbers on Bonjour Santé.

Emergency care physicians say the situation is critical.

“There’s no end in sight and there’s no improvement in sight. So that’s really tough on everyone’s morale,” explained Dr. Judy Morris, president of the Association des Médecins d’Urgence du Québec.

According to the Regroupement des Chefs d’Urgence du Québec – on a daily basis more than 50 per cent of the stretchers in emergency departments are occupied by patients who are waiting for a hospital bed, and these patients are staying in ers for longer than 24 to 48 hours.

“Emergency departments across Quebec. And some regions are worse off than others. We see emergency departments with sometimes half or more than half of their patients on patients that should not be in the emergency room anymore,” said Morris.

Index Santé found many ERs in Quebec are in better shape than they were a few months ago but for most ERs in the greater Montreal area and the Laurentians – emergency departments are almost constantly at overcapacity.

The Montreal General is at 194 per cent as of Tuesday afternoon, the Lakeshore at 197 and Lasalle Hospital at a staggering 207 per cent.

“I mean the medical care I started but people don’t get taken care of. They don’t sleep well. They’re under constant stress. It’s not the way to heal and most of these actually acknowledge that if you’re going to be spending two days in the corridor in the emergency those are two extra days for your admission,” said Dr. Gilbert Boucher, president of the Association des Spécialistes en Médecine d’Urgence du Québec.

“So let’s say you need seven days for a pneumonia and inositol and you already spend two days in the in the corridor. You’re not only left with five days, you still have to do your seven days.”

Quebec says ER patients should not wait longer than 14 hours before being transferred to a bed on a ward – a target that hospitals have been missing.

“The main issue also is the staff. I mean, when we have that many patients in the corridor, there’s no hospital right now. Or staff for 200 per cent of patients,” said Dr. Boucher.

“They’re all staffed and sometimes 125 and 140 at most. But that means there’s still short staff. And what do you do when you’re short staff? Well, you end up having to make 15 decisions in 20 minutes because there’s patients everywhere we need to, to, to keep going and care for the next one and mistakes are going to happen.”

Dr. Morris adding, “It’s very frustrating for us to see that we don’t have enough resources, we don’t have enough space to have someone to choose to say, I would like to spend a little more time with that patient, but I can afford it. Because there are three more, you know, acutely ill patients that need my care. So it’s very distressing.”