KHSC says change to urgent care hours aimed at making access more ‘predictable’ – Kingston

Kingston Health Sciences Centre (KHSC) says new hours at the urgent care centre are intended to make access more predictable, despite concerns the service is being scaled back.

Beginning Wednesday, July 22, the urgent care centre at Hotel Dieu Hospital will register patients from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Friday and from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekends.

The change shortens the centre’s posted schedule, but KHSC executive vice-president of patient care Jason Hann says patient care will not stop when registration closes.

“This is not about actually reducing access to urgent care,” Hann said. “Our goal is to provide more reliable and predictable access.”

KHSC has capped the number of patients accepted each day since about July 2022 because of physician staffing challenges.

Hann said the centre has frequently reached that cap by 11 a.m., noon or 1 p.m., forcing registration to close earlier than patients expected.

Under the new model, KHSC hopes patients will be able to rely on registration remaining open during the posted hours, rather than arriving later in the day and finding the centre has already stopped accepting patients.

“Our goal is that we won’t be seeing fewer patients,” Hann said. “Our goal is we want to see more patients with established hours.”

Patients who register shortly before the cutoff will still be assessed and treated.

Hann said physicians and staff will remain at the centre after registration closes, sometimes until 8 p.m., to complete assessments, imaging, laboratory work and other care.

“It’s not that at four o’clock, if you get registered at 3:50, that you won’t be seen and you need to be out by four o’clock,” he said.

The change has raised questions about where patients with urgent but non-life-threatening concerns should go after registration closes, particularly when many walk-in clinics are no longer open.

Hann acknowledged some patients could instead go to the emergency department at Kingston General Hospital, but said KHSC has not seen evidence previous registration caps caused a significant increase in emergency department volumes.

He said patients arriving at the emergency department are increasingly dealing with more complex and acute medical issues.

Kingston and the Islands MPP Ted Hsu said the new schedule more accurately reflects the resources currently available.

“If you have an issue after hours, and you aren’t covered by a clinic that offers an after-hours service, then you have to go to an emergency,” Hsu said.

He said he does not expect the change itself to add significantly more pressure to the emergency department because the urgent care centre was already regularly closing registration early.

“This is not a reflection of cutbacks,” Hsu said. “They’re just trying to set expectations to what the reality is, but we have to keep working to increase the capacity of our health-care system.”

On Saturdays and Sundays, KHSC will also reassign one urgent care physician shift to the KGH emergency department during the evening to help reduce wait times.

Hann said KHSC continues to recruit emergency physicians and could expand urgent care registration hours if staffing improves.

The hospital said registration could still close early in exceptional circumstances if the clinical team determines it cannot safely accept more patients.

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