Hamilton hospital cuts time to offload emergency ambulance patients from hours to minutes

A Hamilton hospital has made a "spectacular" turnaround cutting the time it takes to transfer patients in ambulances to its emergency department from hours to minutes, says the local councillor.

Juravinski Hospital has reduced its"offloadtime" from a high of3.5 hours for 90 per cent of patients in September 2021 tobelow 17minutes in July 2024,the city's chief paramedic Michael Sandersontold councillorsearlier this month.

Coun. Tom Jackson, whose ward includesthe Mountain-brow hospital, saidit was common to see ambulances parked down the street as paramedics waitedfor a hospital bed to open up for patients in urgent need ofcare, and even surgery.

"This is something we've been hammering away with tremendous concern, anguish, unhappiness and puzzlement as to why the offloads could be hours and hours," Jackson said at council Wednesday.

"This [change] is just tremendous, sensational, spectacular news."

It has freed up ambulances and paramedics to respond to other calls, greatly reducing the number of "code zeros" when there is only one or are noambulances free to respond to emergency calls,Sanderson told CBC Hamilton.

There were over 300 code zero events in 2022, he said. So far this year, there haveonly been two and they were in January.

More staffing has also helped, with council approving the hiring of 35 additional paramedics in 2023 with plans to hire more, Sanderson said.

He called it a "significant investment to make sure we're right sized" to keep up with the needs of a population that's growing and aging.

Other Hamilton hospitals cut times

Juravinski's offload time is now withinMinistry of Health's standard of 30 minutes, 90 per cent of the time,and is one of the quickest hospitals in Ontario, Sanderson said.

To address the slowoffload times, thehospitalhiredtwo new nurses dedicated to bringing in patients from ambulances and created more space for them by reconfiguringthe emergency department, said Liz Feres, director of emergency medicine and critical care in a statement.

Neil Johnson,avice president at Juravinski, described the processat a committee meeting Sept. 19 as one that demanded"hard changes that take time and effort."

Juravinski has become a model, Sanderson said, for two other major emergency departments to follow.

Hamilton General Hospital's offload time wasabout 50 minutes in July the most recent monthly data available compared to nearly three hours in January 2023, said Sanderson.

St. Joseph's Hospital was30 minutes down from two hours, he said.