The BC Conservatives are raising alarm bells on emergency room wait times.
The Official Opposition party is sharing statistics from the provincial government showing how many people walk out of ERs without being treated, a number that has been growing each year.
“The sheer numbers are staggering,” said Kelowna-Mission MLA Gavin Dew.
“These numbers validate what we’ve all been thinking and seeing, which is that the system is under huge strain.”
The Ministry of Health documents, obtained by the BC Conservatives through a freedom of information request, show nearly 142,000 people left emergency rooms without receiving care between 2018 and 2024, an increase of 86 per cent over that period.
The Interior Health region saw a 55 per cent increase.
“We know that there are people who are simply standing up and walking out because they have given up,” Dew said. “The system is failing people who should be able to rely on it.”
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The added burden on already congested emergency rooms is being blamed, in part, on the shortage of available family physicians, driving people to emergency rooms to seek care.
Global News reached out to Interior Health for comment, but had questions referred to the Ministry of Health.
In a statement, the ministry said, “The sickest patients are always seen first and that patients are never turned away.”
It went on to say the number of patients who leave the emergency department without being seen is a small proportion of the total number of visits, but the local MLA takes exception to that response.
Almost 18,000 people is not a small number,” Dew said.
“That’s 18,000 people, that’s their families, that’s the stress, his strain of not being able to get health care. It is just so insensitive and tone deaf to hear that kind of response.”
The ministry says it continues to bolster the supply of family physicians to ease pressure on emergency rooms, but the opposition says an acute remedy is needed to ensure emergency care is there for everyone when needed.
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