Article content

TORONTO — Visiting a hospital emergency department often conjures up an image of hours of cooling one’s heels before being assessed by a doctor, treated and released.

For most patients, that process takes long enough, 7.5 hours or less on average, says a report released Tuesday. But for the 10% of patients who need to be admitted, those waits can be much longer, with one in 10 of those requiring an in-hospital stay waiting in an emergency department more than 28 hours before getting transferred to a bed.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Hospital emergency room wait is more than 28 hours for 10% of patients: report Back to video

The report by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) found seniors are among those with the longest wait times: one-quarter of those aged 65 and older who visit an ER need to be admitted, and one in 10 of them are kept in the emergency department more than 31 hours before getting a bed.

“For seniors, they’re more likely to have one or more chronic conditions and other related health issues; they’re more likely to need admission when they do go to the emergency department,” said Greg Webster, director of acute and ambulatory care information services at CIHI. “So that means that there are more seniors in that admitted category that tends to have the longest emergency department waits.”