Emergency Departments are a constant flux of activity with patients and staff moving in and out. Sometimes the wait to see a physician is long and other times it doesn’t seem so bad. But what if there was a way to help patients decide which ED to present to?
That’s where the Emergency Department Wait Times Dashboard comes in.
The dashboard is an online tool that allows residents to check average ED wait times at Vancouver General, St. Paul’s, Mount Saint Joseph, Lions Gate and Richmond hospitals.
Initially developed at St. Paul’s Hospital as an internal tool to smooth out patient volumes and improve flow, the benefits of such a website to the public soon became obvious.
“Three-quarters of all ED visits are walk-in patients,” says Dr. Eric Grafstein, head of the emergency department in the VCH region. “The dashboard allows patients with non-critical illnesses to choose where to receive treatment based on the shortest average wait time to see a doctor.”
The tool will also be used by the BC Ambulance Service and HealthLinkBC to direct patients to the location with the greatest capacity.
The dashboard works by calculating the average wait time to see a physician for all patients who arrive at the emergency department in the preceding hour. These wait times are real time information that are updated every five minutes, although critically ill patients are excluded from the calculation because they’re always seen immediately. The dashboard also displays the time it takes for 9 out of ten patients who visit the emergency department to be seen by a physician. This helps would-be patients know how long they might have to wait.
The first site of its kind in BC to use real time to identify wait times, similar emergency department dashboards are also available in Calgary, Edmonton and Kitchener, Ontario. The tool is also successfully used throughout the United States.
Staff and patients are welcome to provide feedback about the site to edwaittimesfeedback@vch.ca.