More doctors has equalled fewer emergency department visits in Humboldt this year.
Though earlier this year, officials with the Saskatoon Health Region (SHR) were watching the number of visits to the emergency room at the Humboldt District Hospital climb, for the last few months, that number has been dropping.
"We're finding that the emergency department numbers are going down now," said HDH site manager Yvonne Berscheid on Monday.
It's believed that numbers were going up due to the doctor shortage in Humboldt. Members of the public were having difficulty accessing primary health care at the local clinic and so turned to the emergency department when they had health concerns. This resulted in a high number of people visiting emergency with non-urgent health issues.
Now, with 12 doctors working in Humboldt, people are able to get appointments at the clinic for their non-urgent concerns.
This has resulted in fewer emergency department visits.
The numbers definitely tell the story. The number of emergency department visits in 2012 were as follows:
January: 779
February: 771
March: 891
April: 822
May: 860
June : 862
July: 875
August: 733
September: 681
October: 669
November: 586
Between June and November, there's a difference of nearly 300 patients per month.
New doctors arrived in the area in August and September, and that's when the numbers started to drop.
According to statistics gathered on the severity of the cases brought to the emergency room, in October there were 226 which were more serious, and definitely needed to visit the emergency department. Over 400 were non-urgent cases, and 25 were not assigned a score.
Still, it appears the non-urgent visits are tapering off, noted Berscheid.
Dr. Warren Huber of the Humboldt Clinic said local physicians are also noticing that visits to the emergency department have gone down.
"Though we are probably seeing as many complex problems," he said, the non-urgent issues have dropped off.
With more doctors, now there is capacity at the clinic for people to see a physician there when it is appropriate, Berscheid noted.
"We certainly appreciate everyone's patience," said Berscheid. There was pressure, she noted, and everyone felt it, from the physicians, who were providing emergency and primary care to people, while knowing many out there were still needing primary care physicians, to the nurses, who had to deal with the frustrations of the public, to the public, who were obviously frustrated by the situation as well.
"It was a difficult time for sure," said Berschied. "We're very happy the physician recruitment group worked so hard and we have physicians now to take some of that pressure off."
Berscheid asked that the public continue to be mindful of the appropriate use of that department.
There are still a lot of night calls to the hospital for the doctor on call, Huber noted.
The number of people coming in between midnight and 6 a.m. has remained about the same over the past six months, at about 1.6 per night, and that's something with which Dr. Huber's view concurred.
"Sometimes it's crazy, sometimes it's not bad. It's unpredictable, as it always has been and always will be," Huber said of the number of cases coming in at night.
Many of the non-urgent cases coming in at night involve people who don't live in the community, he noted, so their first reaction when something is wrong is to come to the emergency room.
Others, Huber said, are still not sure when they can come to the clinic.
Handling on-call duties for the emergency department has become much more tolerable for the physicians, he added, not because the number of visits has dropped, but because they have to take call less frequently - there are more hands now to share that load.
The new doctors, he added, are being kept very busy at the clinic.
With the large number of new doctors who have arrived since August - four in total - one might think that it would take a while to build up their practices.
However, Huber said, that is not the case.
"They're all busy and fitting in very well," he stated.
