After a chaotic start to the year 2023, the pressure in the emergency rooms of Quebec hospitals is gradually being reduced, but remains high. However, the wait for surgery continues to increase to reach new heights.
By early January, the ER stretcher occupancy rate had reached a record high of 130.7%. Since then, the level has gradually dropped. As of Monday, the province’s emergency rooms had an occupancy rate of 118.4%.
Despite this sharp drop, the emergency room occupancy rate remains higher than the levels observed during the same period in January 2022 (97%) and 2021 (89%).
The emergency rooms on the immediate outskirts of Montreal remain the busiest at present. Despite clear improvements since the beginning of the year, the regions of Lanaudière, Laurentides and Montérégie continue to post occupancy rates that are clearly higher than the rest of the province. Conversely, more remote regions, including Gaspésie, Bas-Saint-Laurent and Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, have low occupancy rates. These three regions are the only ones to fall below the government target of keeping the occupancy rate below 85%.
The drop in pressure in the emergency room is largely due to the marked drop in the number of people presenting to the emergency room each day. About 8,600 people a day are going to the emergency room now, compared to a peak of 10,900 at the beginning of December.
Once again, despite this apparent improvement, it is important to mention that the number of visits remains significantly higher than what was observed in January 2021 and 2022. The confinements and health restrictions linked to the pandemic had caused visits to the emergency at about 6,500 visits per day.
Surgical delays are increasing
Apart from emergencies, waiting lists for surgery are increasing in the health network. As of December 31, there were 163,991 people waiting for surgery, which is a new high. Waiting lists have been growing steadily for three years. In January 2020, before the pandemic hit, surgery waiting lists had 115,500 names. It is in orthopedic surgery that there are the most people waiting, almost 40,000.
Small glimmer of hope, the number of people waiting for more than a year has fallen slightly since this fall. As of December 31, there were 20,649 people waiting for 365 days, compared to 22,197 in September. Still, this remains much more than before the pandemic. In January 2020, only 2,564 waited that long.