Rocky View residents driving into Calgary for emergency and clinic-based health care will now be able to learn their expected wait time before leaving the house.
With Alberta Health Services’ new web tool, people can log on and receive up-to-the-minute information under the Calgary Emergency Department Wait Times tab.
“Through this initiative, patients and the public will have access to up-to-the-minute wait times and the same information the emergency departments and urgent care centres are using internally,” said Gene Zwozdesky, Alberta’s health minister. “It’s a great example of our commitment to improving access to emergency care for all Albertans.”
The service is part of AHS’ five-year plan to improve many areas of health care.
The Foothills Hospital, Peter Lougheed Centre, Rockyview General Hospital, Alberta Children’s Hospital, Sheldon M. Chumir Health Centre and South Calgary Health Centre will all subscribe to the service.
“Our research tells us that we are the first health-care organization in the country to provide real-time wait times online,” said Dr. Cheri Nijssen-Jordan, AHS senior medical lead. “We want to ensure that we are providing the public with the most current information available.”
Wait times will be determined by software to assess data from each hospital to estimate how long it takes one patient to see a doctor after being assessed by a triage nurse.
However, the wait times do not represent the time a patient may spend at the hospital altogether.
“We know that emergency demand can change quickly and dramatically, without notice, so these times are an estimation,” says Dr. Grant Innes, regional clinical department chief, emergency medicine, AHS. “But they are based on a number of very consistent factors, including how many patients are waiting to be seen, how sick they are, and how many resources we have available at a particular time to handle those patients.”
Rocky View County Reeve Rolly Ashdown said the new system is a nice way of giving residents wait times and letting them know what their options are.
“Anything that they are doing to provide more information to our residents is a good thing,” he said.
Calgary is the first community to run the service. Currently, Rocky View County emergency care includes centres in Airdrie and Cochrane open 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.
