Family angry after man spends 11 hours waiting for care at Cambridge hospital

A Waterloo Region man is demanding improvements to the regional healthcare system after his father-in-law waited hours for care at Cambridge Memorial Hospital last week.

Andrew Pearen's relative, who is living with cancer, became dizzy and confused, prompting a call to 911 last Wednesday, Pearen said.

He was ultimately admitted for observation but only after waiting more than 11 hours to be transferred from the care of paramedics to the care of the hospital.

"People just throw their hands in the air and say, 'That's the system. The system is broken. We just have to accept that the system is broken,'" he said.

"And my challenge is, why do you have to accept that the system is broken? That is not the right mentality, and I don't believe it's the truth."

'People are very, very sick'

The director of the emergency department and mental health for the Cambridge hospital said she couldn't speak to the specific case involving Pearen's father-in-law.

But Donna Didimos said the ER has seen a spike in volume since Boxing Day, exceeding anything she's seen previously in her seven months in her role.

"The acuity has been absolutely … horrendous," she said. "People are very, very sick."

Still, Didimos said, her hospital is always striving to do better, and she'd be happy to speak with Pearen about his family's experience.

So-called offload delays like the one Pearen's relative experienced, have been cited by multiple ambulance services in the province as a significant threat to their ability to respond to emergencies in a timely manner.

11 hours is unusually long

Code Reds — situations in which there are no available ambulances — grew in both duration and frequency during the last half of 2023, according to John Riches, the chief of Waterloo Region Paramedic Services.

An estimated 70 per cent of ambulances are not transferring patients to hospitals within the provincially accepted standard of 30 minutes, he added.

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But 11 hours is an unusually long offload delay, said Dave Bryant, the co-vice president of CUPE 5191, which represents paramedics in the Region of Waterloo.

"I would say the average offload is lasting around four to five hours," he said.

John Riches is the chief of paramedic services for the Region of Waterloo. He estimated that around 70 per cent of ambulance trips to the regional hospitals result in an offload delay. (John Riches/Linkedin)

"I am aware that, yes, there have been certain situations or circumstances where extended offload delays have happened, even gone over multiple paramedic shifts where another crew is coming on shift."

The paramedic service has up to 35 ambulances on the road at any given time, Riches said, and of those, five to 10 are typically held up due to offload delays.

The province has increased funding for designated offload nurses in Waterloo region to help ensure there is a nurse available 24/7 to help transfer patients, he added.

Staffing remains a challenge, but hospitals have implemented it to the best of their ability.

Offload delays part of larger challenges in health care

"It is helping for sure," he said. "We do know that when there's someone in the designated offload nurse position role offload delay numbers are better."

Riches said the ambulance service is also benefiting from the region's new Fit-2-Sit program, which speeds up the process for paramedics to leave stable patients with less serious issues unattended in a hospital waiting room.

The offload delay problem is part of a larger challenge facing the healthcare sector, said Bryant, the union rep.

Calls for service are way up due to population growth and the opioid crisis.

Meanwhile, there is increased pressure on emergency rooms as people who lack family physicians look to them for non-emergency care.

At the same time, health-care workers are leaving the profession due to burnout, and it's getting harder to recruit replacements because the stressful working conditions have made the profession less desirable, he added.

The province has taken a number of steps to address staff shortages in healthcare, including increasing the number of seats in medical schools and making regulatory colleges develop plans to more quickly register internationally educated professionals.

Last year, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario made it much easier for doctors trained in several countries to work in the province. Ontario also became the first province to allow doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists and medical laboratory technologists already registered or licensed in another Canadian jurisdiction to start work immediately in the province without having to first register with one of Ontario's health regulatory colleges.

But Bryant said healthcare, including paramedic services, has gone with too few resources for too long.

"We're starting to feel the brink of the collapse of the healthcare system," he said.