A new study has shown that the number of visits by homeless people to emergency rooms in Toronto hospitals just to warm up has jumped by 68 percent in the past five years.

Across the province, the number of these non-urgent visits increased by 24% from 2018-2019 to March 31, 2023, according to the study conducted by researchers at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto.

Dr. Caroline Snyder, head of the emergency department at St. Michael's Hospital, said the idea for the study came to her after seeing between five and ten homeless people in the emergency room waiting area due to bad weather when she arrived at work in the morning.

The researchers chose to publish the data before peer review of the study, due to the urgency of the situation with winter approaching, said co-author Dr. Stephen Huang.

The researchers also used data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information and the Ontario Health Insurance Plan, among others. They used exclusion criteria to reach their conclusions regarding weather-related visits, excluding factors such as COVID-19 and overdoses.