Despite its promises, Quebec has not succeeded in reducing the waiting time before seeing a doctor in the emergency room. The average time for medical care was 145 minutes (2h25) in 2021-2022, slightly more than five years ago, according to data obtained by The duty. The Legault government is far from the 90-minute goal formulated when it came to power in 2018.
In its electoral platform, the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) had promised to “reduce the wait to 90 minutes on average before seeing a doctor in the emergency room”. The Legault government is staying the course for 2022-2023. But the Ministry of Health and Social Services (MSSS) has already revised its targets in its 2019-2023 Strategic Plan. The objective for 2020-2021 has increased from 120 minutes to 132 for outpatients. That of 2021-2022 is less ambitious than originally.
For five years, Quebecers who go to the emergency room have to be just as patient between the time they go to triage and the time they see a doctor. They waited an average of five minutes longer in 2021-22 compared to 2017-18. “It hasn’t changed for ten years,” says the president of the Association of Emergency Medicine Specialists of Quebec, Dr.r Gilbert Boucher. It didn’t get worse, but it didn’t get better. »
The average delays in medical treatment, obtained by The duty with the MSSS, include ambulatory clients (in the waiting room) and on stretchers. But according to the Dr Gilbert Boucher, the delay for outpatients is even longer. “We currently estimate around 2 hours 50 minutes [170 minutes] the average time for outpatient medical care,” says the doctor. In 2017-2018, that figure was 164 minutes, he says.
“Ambulatory services are always the lean cow of our emergencies, indicates the Dr Butcher. When our occupancy rates are very high, when there are a lot of stretchers, when we are short of employees, we cut back on minor care, outpatient care. Hence the importance, he continues, of redirecting patients to the appropriate resources.
“Understandable”, says Legault
The duty revealed on Tuesday that the average length of stay on a stretcher in the emergency room reached 16 hours 45 minutes in 2021-2022, well beyond the original ministerial target set at 12.5 hours.
Asked about this, Prime Minister François Legault replied that this delay was “understandable in the current context”, given the 10,000 employees absent due to the pandemic and the catch-up of postponed surgeries. “Now, what we want is to reduce that time in the emergency room,” he said. That’s already half the people who go to the emergency room who shouldn’t be in the emergency room. They should have been seen on the front line in a private clinic or a CLSC, in a family medicine group. François Legault said he was confident of being able to improve the situation with his new deputy Shirley Dorismond, a nurse.
The oppositions see it rather as admissions of failures. “I do not accept the premise of the government which says: “It is structural, it has always happened and there is the pandemic, so that is what it is”, reacted Liberal MP André Fortin. If the government had done the job properly over the past few years, it could have followed through on its election promise, which was to reduce wait times, a 90-minute wait time in the emergency room. »
While he acknowledged that the pandemic had “complicated things”, Mr. Fortin nevertheless criticized the government for using it as an “excuse” to justify its “broken promises”, whether for health access or childcare services, in particular.
Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, of Quebec solidaire, described the CAQ’s “health failures” as “systemic”. “They had promised 90 minutes of waiting in emergencies. It’s a fail. They had promised, like all parties before them, one family doctor per Quebecer. It is a failure,” he said.
In the Parti Québécois, MP Joël Arseneau listed a series of broken promises from the CAQ, in particular for access to mental health services or a family doctor. “As regards health issues as a whole, what we see is that the government has set objectives for the election campaign and for its mandate, but we wonder what measures have been put in place to achieve the goals, and you don’t see them,” he said.
In his opinion, some of the CAQ promises were “magical thinking”. “The problems were already there: what were the means they had in mind [pour les régler] ? he asked. “We lost four years,” he also said sorry.