NEWS RELEASE
ROYAL VICTORIA REGIONAL HEALTH CENTRE
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Patients can now view real-time emergency department (ED) wait times for Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) on the health centre’s website and in the ED waiting rooms.
Three large screens located in emergency will display current wait times for those already waiting for care, however, patients can also check wait times from any device by clicking on an icon on the home page of the RVH website to access the wait times page. On that page they will see:
- Total number of patients currently in Emergency
- The number of patients that have seen a physician and are being treated
- The number of patients that are waiting for initial physician assessment
- The estimated time it will take to see a physician (initial assessment)
“RVH has one of the busiest EDs in the province, averaging 220 – 250 patients a day,” says Janice Skot, RVH president and CEO. “We are also experiencing unprecedented patient volumes and are well over 110 per cent capacity every day. It’s important we manage our communities’ expectations and to find ways to improve the patient experience and one way we can do this is providing access to estimated wait times in ED.”
On the website, there is also a graph showing when the ED will be busiest over the next six hours; a list of area walk-in/urgent care clinics; what to bring when coming to Emergency; and a reminder to call 911 in case of an emergency. The page is accessible through RVH’s home page at rvh.on.ca
The information is compiled through a highly sophisticated algorithm based on historical patient volumes and data, however, times are just estimates and any number of factors can affect these times such as acuity, mass accidents/casualties, unforeseen staffing shortages or environmental factors.
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