The County of Essex reports the number of ambulance offload delays has declined since a local emergency was declared earlier this month.
A local emergency was declared Oct. 17 due to a dramatic increase in Code Blacks, the term used to describe when there are no ambulances available to respond to emergency calls because paramedics are waiting at a hospital to off-load the patient.
There have been just two Code Blacks since the emergency was declared, each lasting for a few minutes.
The declaration brought together a Community Control Group, which included top officials at the County and hospital leaders, which looked for short-term solutions to the issue. Long-term soultions are still being sought as part of work with the province on the issue.
The emergency was declared after Code Blacks totalled 491 minutes through the first two weeks of October compared to 116 minutes in all of September, 77 minutes in August and 31 minutes in July.
A statement from the County says "We are continuing to work with our regional hospital partners and the Province on long-term solutions to address the systemic issues that contribute to these delays."
The statement notes that while there have been no systemic changes that would warrant rescinding this local emergency, the situation has stabilized to the point we can move to the monitoring phase.
The monitoring phase requires the County to report biweekly to the Ministry of Health, Ontario Health, area hospitals, the Central Ambulance Communications Centre and other partners.
The causes of offload delays are complex and connected to longstanding systemic issues related to hospital capacity, patient flow and a lack of local primary care providers, which causes increased usage of the 911 system.
For non-emergency situations, residents are reminded they have multiple options available to them and that calling an ambulance does not get them to the front of the line at the emergency room, where patients are triaged based on the severity of their condition.
Those options include:
- Contact your doctor or go to a walk-in clinic.
- Set up a virtual appointment with a physician using the Urgent Care Ontario website, a service available to residents of Southwestern Ontario.
- Visit Health Connect Ontario or call 811 to talk to a registered nurse 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You do not need to provide your OHIP number and all information is confidential.
- Call Telehealth Ontario at 1-866-797-0000.
- Call 211 to find out about health-care services in Windsor and Essex County.
- Use alternate transportation to go to a hospital emergency room.