At 2 a.m., in a Barrie emergency room lined with weary faces and fluorescent light, a silent contest unfolds: who can endure the longest wait? For many, this is not a rhetorical question, but a test of body and nerve that grows more gruelling with each passing hour.
Ontario’s emergency departments have become synonymous with hallway medicine, where patients are buffered by little more than a clipboard and a curtain. The system is strained well beyond inconvenience. It is now a crucible where lives hang in the balance, as in the recent case of Lori Stetina, who spent twenty hours in an ER before discovering she’d suffered a heart attack and required immediate surgery. Her story began with subtle symptoms and ended, after a night on plastic chairs and whispered triage, in an operating room. “I was terrified,” Stetina recalled, her voice thin but steady. “I didn’t have a clue about anything.”
Such ordeals are not isolated. Dr. Noam Katz, a veteran emergency physician, observes that “long wait times definitely lead to poor patient outcomes.” The problem, he notes, is not a lack of compassion, but a system so overburdened that even the best intentions are lost in the shuffle. National data echoes this: waits of ten to twelve hours are not outliers, but routine.
Advocates argue that the solution is not just more beds, but a sea change in how and where care is delivered. Home Care Ontario and experts such as Dr. Samir Sinha have urged increased investment in home care to relieve pressure on ERs and long-term care facilities. The numbers are telling: fifteen percent of hospital beds are occupied by those who could recover at home, if only the services existed to support them. Meanwhile, 45,000 Ontarians linger on long-term care waitlists, casualties of a system stuck in reactive mode.
Healthcare officials counter that incremental improvements are under way—more staff, weekend discharges, streamlined admissions—but even they acknowledge that “there isn’t one magic answer.” Without urgent reform, stories like Stetina’s will multiply, each a quiet indictment of our collective priorities.
The path forward is neither easy nor singular. It will take political will, sustained advocacy, and a willingness to listen to those who spend twenty hours waiting for their turn. The question is not whether change is needed, but how much longer Ontarians will be asked to wait for it.
References:
Woman waits 20 hours in ER, learns she had a heart attack and needs surgery
Ontario advocates say more home care is solution to hallway medicine | CBC News
