The CEO at Windsor Regional Hospital says it tries to avoid delaying surgeries, but admits sometimes it has to happen.
A study in the latest edition of the Canadian Medical Association Journal found patients whose emergency surgeries are delayed have an increased risk of death or need at least one extra day of recovery time in the hospital.
Hospital CEO David Musyj says it has a lot to do with staffing resources and resources overall.
Speaking on AM800's the Lynn Martin Show, he says physicians can only do one surgery at a time and trauma cases are priorities.
"Sometimes that happens where a scheduled case will have to be delayed just because we have so many emergency cases that came through the door at once because there was a multi-vehicle accident or something like that," he says.
Although the timing of emergencies are hard to plan, Musyj says they sometimes can be predicted.
"We pretty much know the first snowfall of the year, unfortunately we are going to get a lot of fractured hips. Even the first nice day of the year, from a weather point of view, we are going to get a lot of fractured hips because people are getting outside who have been inside all winter long and they go outside and they fall."
He says emergencies surgeries are categories in three cases; surgeries that must be performed within one hour, eight hours and 48 hours.