Hospitals across Ontario including here in the Ottawa Valley are experiencing high wait times in emergency departments.
The Pembroke Regional Hospital (PRH) is asking the community to be patient.
Staffing challenges, high patient volumes, a lack of family physicians, and an increase in patients seeking medical attention with more complex issues are being blamed for high wait times in local emergency departments.
PRH President and CEO Pierre Noel says staff and physicians are working as quickly and safely as possible to ensure appropriate and timely care is received by all.
The hospital says all patients will be seen based on their health status and priority will be given for emergencies such as chest pains, breathing difficulties, broken bones, accidents, uncontrolled bleeding and loss of consciousness.
To help reduce wait times in the hospital emergency departments, if you have a non-urgent health concern and do not have a family doctor or nurse practitioner to provide care in a timely manner, you should call the Renfrew County Virtual Triage and Assessment Centre (RC VTAC) at 1-844-727-6404.
You can also call the new Health Connect Ontario service at 811 for advice or chat online with a registered nurse at Health Connect Ontario.
Some hospitals in Ontario have temporarily had to close their emergency rooms due to staffing shortages. Hospitals in Kingston and Clinton had to temporarily reduce urgent care hours or close and a COVID-19 outbreak has closed the emergency room until Thursday at the Perth location of the Perth and Smith Falls District Hospital.
Dr. Alan Drummond, an emergency physician at the Perth facility, says the number of ER nurses dropped in recent months from around 15 to five. He says the ER was forced to close after two nurses contracted COVID.
(written by: Rudy Kadlec with files from the Canadian Press)