Mississauga’s Credit Valley Hospital experiencing longest admission wait times in Ontario—44 hours; 5 times the target

Recent data from Health Quality Ontario revealed a Mississauga hospital is among the worst performing in the province with patients waiting almost 44 hours on average before being admitted from its emergency department, more than five times the provincial target of eight hours. 

Ontario’s goal is for patients to be admitted to a hospital bed within eight hours of arriving inside its emergency room, but a variety of increasingly troubling factors are putting residents at risk. Staffing shortages, cuts to funding, the ongoing impacts of the pandemic and chronic mismanagement of resources across the province (which sees hyper-growth areas such as Peel waiting decades for funding to catch up to the rapid population increase) have created a crisis in frontline healthcare.

Data reported by Health Quality Ontario (a provincial agency) show Trillium Health Partners’ Credit Valley Hospital is among the worst performing. The Mississauga hospital has the longest emergency department wait times in the province, with patients currently spending an average of 43.7 hours in the waiting room — over double the time spent in hospitals across the province (19.2 hours). Wait times at Trillium’s Mississauga Hospital are 23 hours, an improvement from 29.5 hours reported earlier this year.

In April 2022, Credit Valley Hospital patients were waiting an average of 25.6 hours before being admitted. Since then, wait times have increased dramatically. The hospital hit a peak in January with an average of 43.8 hours before a decline to 32.4 hours in March, then jumping back to 43.7 hours in April.

The emergency department at Trillium Health Partners Credit Valley Hospital has seen patients waiting nearly two days to be admitted to a hospital bed. 

  (Alexis Wright/The Pointer)

Trillium Health Partners (THP), which is the umbrella organization that runs Credit Valley Hospital, Mississauga Hospital and the Queensway Health Centre in west Toronto, stated in its 10-year Strategic Plan, “Investments have not kept pace with the growth and changes in [the] community,” describing the network as “under-resourced for the size and needs of the community.” 

Only 12 percent of patients admitted to Credit Valley Hospital were given a bed within the target time of 8 hours, according to the data available. Keeping with the trend, Mississauga Hospital’s emergency department sees only 19 percent of patients admitted within the target time. No data was available for THP’s Queensway Health Centre.

“The average time spent in the ED fluctuates, but we have been seeing higher lengths of stay for several years now, particularly coming out of the pandemic,” a spokesperson for THP told The Pointer. “At THP, we are caring for a greater number of seniors and individuals with more complex health needs, and multiple conditions than ever before. As a result, patients are needing to stay longer, which leads to fewer discharges, which in turn results in patients having to wait longer in the ED for the most appropriate bed to become available.”

THP did not address questions about whether the organization is seeing an influx in patient visits to Credit Valley Hospital as a result of the current construction at Mississauga Hospital as part of its multi-billion dollar redevelopment and expansion. 

TOP: Credit Valley Hospital patients currently spend an average of 43.7 hours waiting before being admitted to a bed.

BOTTOM: Wait times for Mississauga Hospital are nearly half its sister organization, at 23 hours.

(Health Quality Ontario) 

A report released earlier this year by the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario (FAO) noted that as patient volumes in emergency departments returned to near pre-pandemic levels, ER wait times have simultaneously increased substantially. The report revealed that in 2022, there were roughly 145 unplanned emergency department closures, primarily in rural communities. During that time, the average length of stay in an emergency department for patients admitted to hospitals was 20.9 hours, “the longest average wait time recorded in over 15 years,” marking a 34 percent increase over the five-year period prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The report attributed the increase to a lack of available staff as one of the primary issues causing longer emergency department wait times and closures. 

The FAO reported that while the province’s measures to increase staffing addresses staff shortages in rural emergency departments — which contributed to emergency department closures — the “measures do not provide for a sustained increase in emergency department staffing across the Province,” adding that “From 2017-18 to 2019-20, emergency department wait times were significantly lower despite higher patient volumes. As a result, Ontario’s success in addressing emergency department strain depends on the success of the Province’s measures for the fifth area of focus, which is expanding the health sector workforce.” 

These findings came as the province’s financial monitor projected a $21.3 billion shortfall in the PC government’s healthcare spending by 2027/28. The current spending plan, according to the FAO, will not meet existing commitments or growing demand. It cautioned that existing problems in the healthcare system are “expected to persist” and the current lack of hospital capacity tormenting the province would get even worse as a result of underfunding and a shortage of frontline workers to keep up with the growing demand. While the government has allocated roughly $87.8 billion to be spent on healthcare by 2028, the FAO found the province has not devoted sufficient funds to support existing health sector programs and announced commitments, with spending needs expected to grow to around $93.8 billion in that same period. 

Despite the troubling findings by the FAO, the PC government has spent the past five years since taking office patting itself on the back, continuously toting its commitment to the public health system. Press release spin has repeatedly claimed the PC government is “boldly breaking with a status quo” and “the status quo is no longer acceptable.” These claims contrast the stark reality that the current government has been acutely underspending, stretching existing resources and an exhausted workforce as the healthcare crisis gets worse.

The numbers do not lie. Mississauga residents at one of its two hospitals are waiting 44 hours for a bed. 

As surging wait times persist, the city is anticipating its massive rebuild of Mississauga Hospital, publicized to be one of the largest hospitals in North America, to try and address the growing concern about need outpacing capacity. At nearly three times the size of the existing space, the newly constructed hospital will operate nearly a thousand beds (it currently has approximately 750). Operating rooms will increase to 23, up from 14, and 100 percent of patient rooms will be private. The project will also feature a new and expanded emergency department — projected to be one of the largest in the province — to “[reduce] wait times and [improve] the patient experience.”

A rendering of the 22-storey new Mississauga Hospital.

(Trillium Health Partners)

Trillium has labelled the project, which its officials have said will “shape the future of healthcare” for the community, Trillium HealthWorks. It is the organization’s health infrastructure renewal plan aimed at responding to the community’s future needs. A second expansion within the Trillium Health network will also take place at its Etobicoke ambulatory-care site where the Queensway Health Centre will receive 350 new beds. 

These projects are expected to combat the growing demand for healthcare services across the city where residents are experiencing longer hospital wait times than almost anywhere else in the province.

The Pointer has previously reported on the desperate need for the city’s healthcare system to expand with the population, which is expected to hit a million over the next couple decades as the city drives the development of 120,000 new homes under the PCs’ ambitious housing plan. At its current population, THP saw over 1.6 million patient visits in 2022, with more than 214,000 visits to its emergency departments. These numbers will rise steadily as the city faces substantial population growth with the addition of 120,000 new residential units by 2031, under the province’s plan. 

“While we have seen unprecedented investments in health care over the past few years with the government’s commitment to building The Peter Gilgan Mississauga Hospital and The Gilgan Family Queensway Health Centre, which will add much needed capacity, our community currently has fewer hospital beds per capita than many other parts the province. Compounding that is the fact that there is a lack of adequate home care and community supports in Mississauga,” the THP spokesperson said. 

THP’s strategic plan has acknowledged the organization “will experience more demand for services than any other Ontario hospital in the next 20 years.” It also recognizes “the hospital’s infrastructure has not kept pace for its size and the complexity of care delivered.” In the last half-decade alone, THP has seen a 14 percent increase in patients coming through the emergency departments and urgent care centre, combined with a seven percent increase in the use of outpatient services.

As the city’s landscape evolved from a community of villages and townships surrounded by masses of greenspace and farmland, Mississauga Hospital, built in 1958, became unable to keep up with the growing demand for services. Enter Credit Valley Hospital in 1985. A year after Mississauga’s second hospital was opened, the city’s population was just over 374,000. In 2020, the City’s population sat at 720,000 — almost doubling in 35 years. Despite this, adequate investments were not made into the city’s hospital infrastructure to match its growth. 

To serve a region that continues to experience rapid growth, THP is working with Mississauga Health Ontario Health Team (OHT), community partners and governments “to ensure people are able to receive the right care, at the right time, in the right place,” the spokesperson said. Some of the initiatives that have been implemented or are underway include working with Mississauga Health OHT to raise community awareness of health care options available and when to seek emergency care, opening an additional 30 beds at the Reactivation Care Centre’s (RCC) Church Site, bringing the number of beds to 99 as well as opening a new 632 bed long-term care home, which will be operated by Partners Community Health.

With a dire need to invest in healthcare resources to keep up with increased need, early work on both of THP’s reconstruction and expansion projects are underway with parking structures currently under construction at both sites, a spokesperson from the organization previously told The Pointer. Currently, The Gilgan Family Queensway Health Centre is in the request for proposals (RFP) stage. The organization anticipates the contractor that will build and finance the project will be selected this year. 

In March, THP and Infrastructure Ontario signed a development phase agreement for the new Mississauga Hospital with ED+PCL Healthcare Partners — the development partner selected to develop the project requirements. ED+PCL is expected to enter into a fixed-price project agreement with THP to finalize the design/build/finance phase and maintain the project within the next two years, the organization explained. The construction schedule of the projects will be determined based on the successful bidder’s schedule. 

According to THP’s website, The Gilgan Family Queensway expansion is anticipated to begin in 2024 and ground breaking on The Peter Gilgan Mississauga Hospital is slated to begin in 2025.

Email: [email protected] 

Twitter: @mcpaigepeacock 

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