http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18106275 http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2007/01/25/er-waits.html Study sheds light on ER wait times in Ontario Visits can range from 1 hour in small cities, to more than 9 in bigger ones Last Updated: Thursday, January 25, 2007 | 3:00 PM ET CBC News Ontarians typically waited one to four hours in the province's emergency rooms over a recent one-year period, although wait times in some larger cities stretched past nine hours, according to a new study. Half of visits to emergency rooms in small hospitals didn't last longer than 1.1 hours, indicates the study by the Canadian Institute for Health Information. Half of visits to large hospitals, typically found in big urban centres, lasted between 2.8 and 3.6 hours, the study suggests. In 10 per cent of cases, a visit to a small emergency room stretched out past 3.2 hours, while 10 per cent of visits to big emergency rooms
dragged on beyond 9.3 hours. The institute _base_d its findings on data from April 2005 to April 2006
at nearly every emergency room in Ontario — 167 in total. I think one of the values of this report is that it gives people in Ontario a clear picture of how long people are waiting, researcher Greg Webster told CBC News Online on Thursday, a day after the release
of the study. He said the point of the study is not to judge hospitals or evaluate how their emergency rooms are doing. Instead, the study strives to provide a
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