Grey Bruce Health Services President and CEO Gary Sims says, a virtual ER could be coming to the region.
Sims says the use of a virtual ER is a sort of byproduct of the pandemic, “I think what COVID has taught us, is that it isn’t all about cost. It’s about, how do you deliver services in a different way?”
On the Open Line show on 560 CFOS July 29th, Sims explained, “Virtual care is another platform that’s just skyrocketed during the pandemic and one that we intend not to let go.”
Sims says, “People know when they need to go to emerg normally, and if you’ve got a really bad ear infection or something like that, it’s so painful that you need to be seen, or you need a script (prescription)—-most of those people go to emerg and sit for a very long time waiting to be seen because there are more acute patients in front of them.”
He explains, “It’s really in discussions right now, but the idea would be to have a virtual emerg. So you’d have the ability to call in and have a physician within three to five minutes in front of you on a screen, rather than having to go into emerg. All of these things are possible today.”
Virtual ERs are starting to appear around Ontario and in Canada, with Sudbury’s hospital system using it, Toronto’s Sunnybrook Hospital, and the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, which was the first hospital to offer it in the province.
Sims thinks they’re highly viable solutions for the future, “The future is about being nimble, thoughtful and making sure that you’re delivering care the way patients need it.”
Sims says there is a system used to determine the needs of each case called the Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale (CTAS),
which ranks urgent, emergent or complicated cases as 1 to 3, while less urgent cases rank between 4 and 5, and make up the ‘vast majority’ of ER cases at Grey Bruce Health Services, according to Sims.
He explains it would be useful to a parent for example, “Three o’clock in the morning, somebody has a temp, a cough, you’re thinking okay, you know what? I want to them to see a doctor. Do they need to drive all the way to the emerg to be seen? Or can they go onto virtual, see a physician? The physician can say right away based on what they see– ‘You need to go to the emerg and you know what? I’m going to order these tests.’”
Sims says that information would then be sent to the ER which knows a patient is on the way, “As soon as you arrive you’re already booked in and away you go to be tested.”
He believes everyone will benefit from the virtual option, saying, “Imagine that every day 100 people go into the emerg. Imagine that you wait four to five hours for whatever it is you’re going to be seen for unless you’re critically ill. But Imagine if I could do a virtual service that would say, take 25 of that 100 away, so they would be doing virtual.”
“They might be a younger population or those people that feel comfortable using IT,” says Sims, adding, “Now you only have 75 in the emerg so your wait now instead of four hours might be three, or two and a half, which is better for you, it’s better for the staff in the emerg, better flow of patients and quicker treatment. It’s better for everybody even if it’s used by a portion of people rather than having everybody crammed into one space.”
He adds, “If virtual will serve you, then let’s use it the best we can. If it doesn’t serve you, and if you’re a senior and you need to be seen by a doctor and you want to, go. Go to the emerg. Still go there, because the docs are still there.”
He notes, the virtual ER would be staffed by about six to 12 local doctors, and if they’re all busy at any given point, there are hundreds of physicians around the province who can deliver the service.
Sims says the hospital has had several meetings with some of the companies that now provide that service in Ontario, and physicians have also started to look at it, “We’ve done some working groups to try to figure out would it work for our docs? how would we do it? we’re in that phase right now.”
