When it comes to wait times for first assessments, all five of Ottawa’s E.R. departments have exceeded the provincial average. Health Quality Ontario has provided the latest batch of data, which dates back to July of this year. Across our city, the average wait time for a first assessment by an E.R. doctor was 2 hours. The Queensway-Carleton Hospital owns the longest initial wait time locally, slightly decreasing from last year’s 3.9 hours to July’s 3.5 hours. At the Ottawa Hospital General Campus, it’s a wait of 3.3 hours. The Civic Campus ER, as well as CHEO and Montfort, is somewhere between 2.5 hours and 2.7 hours. Now, the wait time for actual treatments and in-depth conversations with a health professional is obviously much longer. But this is a very big issue, and it’s nothing new to Canada’s Capital. Kristy Cameron digs deeper with Dr. Alan Drummond, who is an Emergency Physician based in Perth, Ontario. He is also a former President of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians.