Erie Shores Healthcare in Leamington reducing wait times to see an ER doctor.
In the summer, the average wait was more than six hours, which hospital CEO Kristin Kennedy admits is not ideal when the Ministry expectation is three hours.
In the last six weeks, however, they've dropped the average wait down to 3.5 hours.
Kennedy attributes the reduction to the implementation of two new programs and creation of an Admission and Discharge Unit.
Chief of Emergency Dr. Braeden Hendy says 70 per cent of their doctors have completed efficiency training where they learn the value of batching patients.
"One facet is to batch patients at the beginning, your shift going to see 2 to 3 patients in a batch. And then coming in to putting those orders in and putting the greatest amount of effort into the first four hours of your shift."
Meanwhile, Kristen Kennedy, CEO of Erie Shores Healthcare, says the hospital has also reserved set time slots - reserved for ER patients - in diagnostic imaging.
"We've seen an overall improvement of about 20% of availability or access to diagnostic imaging scans, which again allows us to get a patient seen earlier or home sooner."
CFO Katelyn Dryden says the hospital has created an Admission and Discharge Unit - ADU for short - which is helping to reduce idle bed time by six hours.
"A patient that's admitted downstairs in the ER, how long are they waiting until they get moved up to an inpatient bed when an inpatient patient is discharged, how long are they waiting to actually leave the hospital?"
Hospital officials say as soon as a patient goes to the ADU, maintenance staff can quickly clean either the ER bed or the acute care bed, thus freeing it up sooner for the next patient.
All three of the ideas have been achieved with the 75-million dollar budget Erie Shores Healthcare gets from the province each year.