Santé Québec to reinstate ER indicator on medical dashboard
Santé Québec announced Monday it will reinstate a highly followed emergency room indicator — the percentage of ER stretchers in hallways occupied by patients for at least 24 hours — after The Gazette reported the omission.
ER patients languishing on gurneys in hospital corridors is considered a major problem across Canada and has been denounced as “hallway medicine” by emergency specialists. Patients lying on ER stretchers are at a higher risk of falling to the floor than they are from a hospital bed, and research has shown they’re also at greater risk of medical errors and accidents, some of which can be fatal.
In perhaps the most tragic example, Normand Meunier, a quadriplegic patient, developed agonizing bedsores after lying on a bare ER stretcher at St-Jérôme Hospital that added to his pain and worsened his wounds, a coroner’s inquest was told last May. Meunier sought medical assistance in dying (MAID).
Previously, the Quebec Health Ministry included this stretcher stays on its medical dashboard. For example, 26.98 per cent of ER stretchers across the province were occupied by patients for at least 24 hours on Sept. 29 last year. However, that category was dropped from the public online dashboard when Santé Québec took control of it in February.
Indicator to add: the percentage of stretcher stays exceeding 24 hours.
In a post Monday afternoon on the X social media platform, Santé Québec suggested it would be reversing its decision on that ER indicator.
“Indicator to add: the percentage of stretcher stays exceeding 24 hours,” Santé Québec pledged. “The information we have is difficult to understand because it mixes percentages and absolute numbers of stretchers in the same graph. We are working on a new version of the graph.”
In the previous chart on that category on the dashboard, a target of zero per cent was listed. The government had set the goal that no ER stretcher should have a patient lying on it for longer than 24 hours — an ambitious objective. At the Royal Victoria Hospital in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, it’s not uncommon for some ER patients to endure stays of up to seven days on a stretcher in a hallway.
It’s not clear whether Santé Québec will maintain that goal or has chosen a new one.
In the past two weeks, Santé Québec has fallen under renewed scrutiny, after cardiac surgeons accused the state corporation managing health care of gaslighting the public on plummeting wait times for heart operations.
On Monday, The Gazette reported the concerns by a prominent ER specialist that Santé Québec had “taken away” critical indicators that the public used to be able to view on the Health Ministry website. For example, the government used to post a target goal of less than 16 hours for patients lying on ER stretchers. That goal is now gone from Santé Québec’s dashboard.
In its post on X, Santé Québec condemned Monday’s Gazette article for reporting “false and erroneous information.” It included four infographics in which it sought to set the record straight.
The Gazette has reviewed all of Santé Québec’s claims and found that the article in question did not contain errors of fact.
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