Need urgent care in Windsor, Ont.? Prepare for a long wait
CBC
After a three-hour wait at an urgent care clinic in Windsor, Ont., Christy Clarkson started to lose her patience.
"Just having to sit there and wait is so frustrating, like I wanted to cry because nobody wants to sit and wait in a room with a bunch of other sick people for hours upon hours," she said.
"I just think it's totally unnecessary and it's actually disgusting how our medical system is."
John Busser had a similar experience at the same clinic. In the last month, Busser said he's gone to the clinic a few times and was either met with a two-hour wait or was turned away due to the overwhelming number of patients.
"It's disheartening because you need the service and if you get turned away, you have to go travel everywhere around for it," he said. "Sometimes you have to wait another day and hopefully you can get in."
These experiences are a snapshot of the current state of Windsor's healthcare system, which is being overrun by patients. The emergency room at Windsor Regional Hospital's Metropolitan (Met) campus had the longest average wait time in the province in May.
According to new statistics released by Ontario Health, patients at Met have waited more than five hours on average to see a doctor.
Some frontline workers at walk-in clinics say these delays are causing people to seek care elsewhere in the community.
One nurse practitioner at a Windsor walk-in clinic said that in recent months they've frequently opened their doors to lineups and have had to stop taking patients anywhere from one to three hours before their scheduled closing time.
CBC News has agreed to not use the nurse's identity, because she is concerned that speaking publicly could put her job at risk.
"In the last two to three months, I would say the volume has at least doubled to tripled ... at my clinic specifically," she said.
"We have a line of usually 10 to 15 patients a day usually before we even open and a lot of those patients tell us how they waited overnight and left from the emergency room, which is really sad."
In addition to the extra demand, the nurse said they're seeing more patients with severe health issues that the clinic isn't equipped to handle. In these cases, she said they prioritize those patients to determine the level of care that is needed, but she said this sets them back in their day.
She said that while patients might not want to wait at the emergency, health concerns such as a potential heart attack, difficulty breathing or chest pains likely can't be handled at the average walk-in clinic.
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