The number of Canadians who visit emergency departments across the country only to give up and leave before they receive any care has increased more than fivefold, according to new data collected by CTV News.
The problem is coded by hospital emergency departments as “LWBS” -- patients who “leave without being seen” due to long waits caused by overcrowded ERs and staff shortages.
Lisa Salamon, an emergency room doctor in Scarborough, Ont., found the numbers “unbelievable” when she heard them for the first time. When a patient presents to the emergency department, they are given an initial assessment to see if they are in need of immediate care — for instance, a person experiencing a heart attack will be seen within minutes, regardless of the number of people already waiting.
Read more: 'She should be here': Nova Scotia family says loved one died shortly after leaving busy ER Dr. Trevor Jain, an emergency physician, told CTV National News that there’s a misconception that an influx of patients coming to the emergency department with small concerns is what is causing overcrowded ERs.
Lang, who is a professor and department head for emergency medicine at the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary, said that without the staffing capacity and space to move patients to other departments, there’s nothing doctors can do. “Taxpayers have a right, given how much they're spending on their on taxes, to demand a high quality health-care system.”“We should put our politicians to answer for what they will do to address the current state of affairs, the safety net which is the emergency departments are functioning at levels that are suboptimal because of what's going on.”
When presented with the new data showing a fivefold increase, the office of the federal Health Minister did not address the rising number of Canadians who are leaving the emergency department without having received care, but said in a statement that they know Canadians worry about wait times. Israel has quietly helped fuel Azerbaijan's campaign to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh, supplying powerful weapons to Azerbaijan ahead of its lightening offensive last month that brought the ethnic Armenian enclave back under its control, officials and experts say.
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