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It’s 1:43 on a Friday afternoon at Grace Hospital and things are busy. There are 44 patients in the emergency department, some in the waiting room, others in the treatment area.

The ER is close to capacity, but there are no ambulance off-loads and one of the ER’s two resuscitation beds is open. Of the 44 ER patients, six are admitted to hospital, meaning they’re waiting for a bed upstairs on the medical ward.

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Wait times are long today, but manageable. Close to half the ER patients are non-admitted – they’ll be treated and discharged. But five admitted patients have been waiting over eight hours for a bed and they need to move upstairs soon to make room for incoming patients.

The good news is there are four patient discharges about to occur upstairs and a possible nine more. ER staff only know that because of a new electronic bed management system they never had access to before.

“This is busy,” said Krista Williams, the WRHA’s chief health operations officer.