{"id":58791,"date":"2020-04-07T09:24:11","date_gmt":"2020-04-07T13:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/?p=58791"},"modified":"2020-04-07T09:24:11","modified_gmt":"2020-04-07T13:24:11","slug":"as-callers-wait-days-to-hear-from-telehealth-ontario-province-says-to-call-your-family-doctor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/local\/gta\/as-callers-wait-days-to-hear-from-telehealth-ontario-province-says-to-call-your-family-doctor\/","title":{"rendered":"As callers wait days to hear from Telehealth Ontario, province says to call your family doctor"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ontario government is instructing people to call their primary-care physician, if they have one, instead of its Telehealth system after widespread complaints that\u00a0the\u00a0wait time to speak to a nurse is\u00a0several days.<\/p>\n

“For people to call their own family doctor is probably a more timely way to deal with it,” said Health Minister Christine Elliott on Monday.<\/p>\n

<\/section>\n

She said the aim is to get the average wait time down to a day.<\/p>\n

“Waiting three days is not acceptable.”<\/p>\n

4 days, 10 hours<\/h2>\n

A London, Ont. woman is worried for anyone who needs health advice in a more timely manner after calling Telehealth last week with stomach pains and a fever.<\/p>\n

“I though it maybe was my appendix,” said Rhea Lip.<\/p>\n

After trying several times to get through to an operator, she was finally told her wait for a call back from a nurse was four days and 10 hours.<\/p>\n

“I was really shocked,” she said. “People who call Telehealth depend on … getting a nurse’s opinion, especially at times like this.”<\/p>\n

Several people online also complained of long wait times, both for COVID-19 and other health questions.<\/p>\n

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The Ministry of Health told CBC News the current average wait time for COVID-19 related calls is approximately 23 hours, while the average wait time for other inquiries is about 60 hours, or two-and-a-half days.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

That’s after adding 336 nurses and 106 intake staff to answer incoming calls.<\/p>\n

As of April 4, the service had received 79,000 COVID-19-related calls.<\/p>\n

The Ministry of Health said it’s working with Telehealth Ontario to help address\u00a0the increased daily call volumes and reduce callback wait times.<\/p>\n

Self-assessment and virtual visits<\/h2>\n

While Ontario officials initially asked the public to call Telehealth about COVID-19 symptoms, the province’s chief medical officer of health Dr. David Williams said it’s now advising people to call their family doctors because of several moves the government has made.<\/p>\n

These include the creation of\u00a0an online self-assessment tool, which has had more than a million hits since it launched March 23.<\/p>\n

The province also approved physician billing codes for phone consultations, while others are doing virtual appointments.<\/p>\n

That includes Dr. Sohail Gandhi, president of the Ontario Medical Association and a family doctor in Stayner, Ont., just south of Collingwood.<\/p>\n

“I’m personally grateful when [patients] contact me,” he said. “I’d rather patients get information from me than someone else, because I know them.”<\/p>\n

Gandhi suggested all patients contact their family doctor first, since their physicians have knowledge of a patient’s history. He said the workload has been high, but manageable since some non-essential appointments have been put on hold for now.<\/p>\n

As for the roughly one million Ontarians who don’t have a family doctor,\u00a0Williams suggests those patients don’t have much of a choice.<\/p>\n

“Telehealth is still available. It’s still a good place to call for advice and direction.”<\/p>\n

CBC<\/p>\n

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The Ontario government is instructing people to call their primary-care physician, if they have one, instead of its Telehealth system after widespread complaints that\u00a0the\u00a0wait time to speak to a nurse …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":46862,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3538],"tags":[16357,16589],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Health-Minister-Christine-Elliott.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58791"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}