{"id":438519,"date":"2026-01-28T11:27:43","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T11:27:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/438519\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T11:27:43","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T11:27:43","slug":"urgent-care-clinics-wont-address-er-overcrowding-says-emergency-room-physician","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/438519\/","title":{"rendered":"Urgent Care Clinics Won\u2019t Address ER Overcrowding says Emergency Room Physician"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t&#13;<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/HSC-adult-emergency-hospital-health-sciences.jpg\" class=\"header-image\" alt=\"Urgent Care Clinics Won't Address ER Overcrowding says Emergency Room Physician\"\/>\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>An ER doctor says he doesn\u2019t believe new urgent care centres will make a dent in ER wait times, simply because patient numbers are not the cause of the problem.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/line-up-at-urgent-care-clinic.jpg\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-289468\" class=\"size-full wp-image-289468\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/line-up-at-urgent-care-clinic.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"400\"  \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-289468\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A line-up at the new Urgent Care Clinic (VOCM News)<\/p>\n<p>Demand at the new urgent care centre in the capital city\u2019s east end has been high since it opened its doors last week, diverting patients with cuts, breaks and sprains away from emergency rooms.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Scott Wilson says that\u2019s great for patients who are orphaned without a family doctor, but the real issue is the lack of beds in hospitals that is causing overcrowding and extended wait times in ERs.<\/p>\n<p>He says overcrowding is caused by patients who have been admitted but can\u2019t be moved into the hospital and must stay in emergency room spaces.<\/p>\n<p>That, says Dr. Wilson, blocks up emergency room beds that are designed for patients who are waiting there. He says until those beds are freed up, \u201cyou\u2019re not going to decrease wait times.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He says he has faith that the current administration at NLHS understands the issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; An ER doctor says he doesn\u2019t believe new urgent care centres will make a dent in ER&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":["post-438519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}