The University Health Network issued an alert on Thursday regarding Toronto ER signs about a growing crisis in the province's healthcare system. The alert was issued on Thursday stating that the emergency department at Toronto General Hospital was at capacity and that doctors should send their patients elsewhere.

The University Health Network (UHN) sent an alert urging to send patients to other emergency rooms and specialty clinics or send them home if possible. Irene O'Connor, Deputy Medical Director of Emergency Departments at UHN, said: this type of alert has been used before for intensive care units, but it will now be used to report the situation in the emergency departments of the network's hospitals.

O'Connor said on Friday: "The real intention is to give everyone else in the organization awareness of the organization's status about what is happening in the emergency department." She added: There were patients waiting on EMS stretchers with our paramedic colleagues and we could not actually move."

O'Connor said the emergency beds were already full of patients who were supposed to be transferred to other departments. The problem was that those other departments were also full, leaving no beds available for new emergency patients.

The emergency room at Toronto General Hospital reached its full capacity on Thursday. Doctors in the university hospital network were asked to send patients to other emergency departments and specialty clinics or send patients home if possible. Emergency departments across the province have been facing capacity issues for months, partly due to staffing shortages.

Earlier this week, Toronto Children’s Hospital reported wait times of up to 12 hours due to unusually high patient volumes. Experts say these ongoing problems are worsening and they are concerned about pressure on the healthcare system moving into the winter months with flu season and the potential increase in COVID-19 cases and other respiratory illnesses that could overwhelm hospitals.

Natalie Mehra, Executive Director of the Ontario Health Alliance, a network of community organizations aimed at advocating for and protecting the province’s healthcare system, said: "This is a kind of canary in the coal mine." She said: "If the situation is bad in October, how will it be when we reach November, December, and January... I think everyone is really worried about what will happen."

She said: All areas of healthcare are facing the same capacity and staffing shortages, which in turn supports patients in emergency departments. Mehra said: "You go to the emergency department and wait... 20 to 30 hours to get into a bed in a brightly lit hallway with no privacy." "It is terrible." She said the provincial government is responsible for the current healthcare crisis. It was created through political decisions to shrink hospital sizes beyond any reason or evidence, then the pandemic put... unprecedented pressures on [the system]."

The Ontario Ministry of Health said it has taken a number of steps to support emergency rooms across the province. These measures include a funding incentive program aimed at helping reduce patient length of stay and programs aimed at providing timely care for patients outside of emergency departments, such as virtual access to physicians.

But Katherine Hoy, president of the Ontario Nurses’ Association, agreed the government is wrong. She said: "I can assure you that people are dying due to lack of resources in healthcare right now and the government is not doing anything at all about it."

Katherine says the shortage of emergency rooms can be directly linked to the shortage of nursing staff. (Ontario Nurses’ Association). Hoy said capacity issues in emergency departments are a direct result of the ongoing nursing shortage.

She said: "The government has done nothing at all to try to retain the nurses they have." Hoy also pointed to Bill 124, a controversial provincial legislation that limits wages for some public sector workers, as one of the reasons many nurses are retiring or leaving.

Hoy said: "There has to be some respect." "I honestly do not understand why the government won’t repeal this bill and treat nurses how they should be treated." The Ford government argued that Bill 124 is a necessary temporary measure to slow public sector wage growth and does not violate workers’ constitutional right to collective bargaining.

Edited by: Yusra Bamtaraf