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QUEEN’S PARK – After a London resident was told to expect a 15-hour wait to get from ambulance to ER admission, MPP Peggy Sattler (London West) is urging the Ford government to address unacceptably long wait times for Ontario’s emergency rooms and ambulance offload delays.
During Question Period Wednesday, Sattler told the story of Amanda Molnar, a mother whose son is blind and non-verbal, with complex medical needs. When Amanda needed to call an ambulance last week for her son, she was told it would be a 15-hour wait before seeing a doctor, due to a backlog in the Emergency Room. With no good way to support her son through that long wait, she made the agonizing decision to not go to the ER.
“This crisis in our healthcare system is absolutely unacceptable,” said Sattler. “Ford’s failure to deal with long ER wait times is risking the health of patients like Amanda’s son. A 15-hour wait in the ER should never happen in Ontario.”
Staffing shortages in Emergency Rooms can cause long wait times for patients and delays in ambulance offboarding – which then keeps ambulances stalled instead of saving more lives.
To address the staffing shortages in Ontario’s health care system, the NDP has proposed bringing back practice-ready assessments for health care workers, called for the repeal of Bill 124, and a strategy to recruit, attract, retain, and return health care workers.
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