Toronto's paramedics union is painting a bleak picture of the situation in city emergency rooms.
They say overcrowding is so common they sometimes wait hours with patients before they are admitted, so much that in a few instances, patients are dying before even seeing a doctor.
Earlier this week, the unit ambulance chairman for Toronto Paramedic Local 416 told reporters that three people died between Monday and Tuesday at the Etobicoke General Hospital.
Glenn Fontaine said one patient had a heart attack after spending three hours in the waiting room and another passed away while waiting with paramedics for a bed.
While Toronto Emergency Medical Service Deputy Chief Norm Lambert says he has seen no evidence that Fontaine's claims are true, he admitted paramedics citywide are feeling stressed by over-capacity emergency rooms, which often keep them waiting with patients for hours.
"It's a very frustrating situation for our paramedics... To be standing in the hospital emergency department for hours looking after patients, it's not really what they've been trained to do," he told CTV Toronto's Austin Delaney, noting that many are working unwanted overtime hours due to the wait times.
At one point Thursday, seven ambulances were parked outside Etobicoke General's emergency room, waiting to unload patients. But while there may be an offload problem, the "hall of shame" deaths described by the union's Fontaine simply isn't true, said Dr. Naveed Mohammad, the hospital's head of emergency.
"What they are saying is completely untrue," Mohammad told CTV Toronto, admitting that there are just enough beds for all the patients who come in. "We do have deaths in our department, a lot of sick people come through here and people die in the department."
According to the Ontario Hospital Association, the issue is province wide. On any given day, about 680 patients wait for beds that aren't available, it said, adding that 2,800 patients who should be in nursing homes or at their own houses take up beds unnecessarily.
