
Expect long emergency wait times at QEH to continue, says doctor
CBC
The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown has hired a new emergency department doctor, but ER physician Dr. Trevor Jain says long wait times are expected to continue.
"This is not a QEH emergency department issue," said Jain, adding that wait times over the summer averaged six to eight hours.
"This is an Island-wide issue. It's just reflected in the emergency department downstream."
Those issues in the overall health system include a shortage of family physicians. The end result is the department seeing more patients on a daily basis than it was designed to.
On average, the ER has recently seen 118 people a day, and it is staffed to see only 90 to 95.
Jain said he welcomes the hiring of Dr. Harrison Carmichael, but improvements across the health-care system are needed to bring down wait times in the hospital's emergency department.