Starting Saturday, August 26, Kingston Health Sciences Centre’s (KHSC) Urgent Care Centre (UCC), located at its Hotel Dieu Hospital site, will be reducing its hours of operation on weekends. Facing a shortage of Emergency Medicine physicians, the decision to reduce weekend hours at the UCC was made in order to ensure adequate physician staffing at the Emergency Department (ED), located at the Kingston General Hospital (KGH) site.
Moving forward, the UCC will operate Saturdays and Sundays from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Weekday operating hours will continue to be 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday to Friday. As a reminder, the UCC caps the daily number of patients that can be seen, which means it may also close registration earlier than the posted closing time. The cap is determined daily, based on the number of patients, physician and nurse staffing levels, wait times, and the complexity of patients receiving care.
“Despite our recruitment efforts, we continue to be significantly short-staffed and our doctors and nurses are stretched thin,” says Dr. David Messenger, Head of the Department of Emergency Medicine. “We need to take this action to preserve access to safe, timely and high-quality emergency care for patients with serious illnesses and injuries from across our region.”
As staffing challenges became a significant concern last summer, the UCC first began capping the number of patients that could be seen each day to enable health-care teams to spend the appropriate amount of time with each patient and to provide safe and effective care.
However, over the last six months emergency physician staffing in particular has decreased further, resulting in the reduction of weekend hours at the UCC. This is due to an inability to fill all the shifts required to maintain current operating hours at the UCC, while also filling all shifts necessary to provide care for the high volume of patients at the ED, which serves as southeastern Ontario’s major referral centre for trauma, stroke, cardiology, subspecialized surgery, and mental health and addiction care.
"For the last several years our entire health-care system has been under tremendous pressure as all hospitals across the country experience similar issues,” says Dr. David Pichora, KHSC’s president and CEO. “No single organization will be able to solve these systemic problems on their own and we continue to work with our peer hospitals, government and partners to find sustainable solutions.”
“In the meantime, we recognize this is unwelcome news for our community, but rest assured, our priority is to focus our resources to provide emergency medical care in our ED which is a critical resource for the entire southeast.”
The ED at the KGH site will remain open and available 24/7 to provide care for patients with serious illnesses and injuries. The UCC meanwhile, continues to be available seven days per week to serve patients with urgent health concerns.
“We want to remind the community that the UCC serves patients that have new medical conditions and injuries that can’t wait to be treated in another setting such as a primary care or family doctor’s clinic, walk-in or virtual care clinic, or a community pharmacy,” says Dr. Messenger. “Examples of urgent conditions include cuts needing stitches, wounds or burns, sprains or suspected minor broken bones, and symptoms of infection – such as pain, fever, vomiting, rash – in otherwise healthy people. The UCC is not an appropriate place to seek care for chronic and ongoing health issues or mental health concerns.”
In fact, many visitors to the UCC arrive with conditions that are better treated by family doctors or by community pharmacists, who may renew existing prescriptions and prescribe medication for 13 common concerns such as non-reoccurring urinary tract infections, tick bites, muscles strains and basic skin irritations and infections.
For critical or life-threatening conditions that need immediate attention, patients should not hesitate to go to the nearest emergency department or call 9-1-1. Medical emergencies include heavy bleeding, serious shortness of breath, a broken major bone, severe and sudden pain or change in ability to move, speak or think.
Visit www.rightplacerightcare.ca to learn more about the alternate care options available in our communities.
