Dan Trivett told CTV News Toronto that he was involved in a collision in Mississauga on October 26.  As a result, he spent three hours at Mount Sinai Hospital for a concussion evaluation before being sent home.
However, shortly after he started making dinner, Trivett says he began to feel severe pain in his abdomen.
“It felt like I was being stabbed with a knife and my ribs were being crushed,” he told CTV News Toronto.  “[I] I almost broke out in a sweat, I tried to call my husband, I couldn’t breathe.”
The family was eventually able to call 911 and Trivett was rushed to Toronto General Hospital around 2 a.m.  He said he waited on a gurney for about two to three hours with a heart monitor on to make sure he wasn’t having a heart attack.
During those three hours, the paramedics who transported him by ambulance stayed by his side.
Trivett was then told to go to a rapid assessment center, which he described as a cabin with a lounger.  He stayed there until he was admitted to the hospital around 2 a.m., nearly 24 hours after he first arrived.
Throughout the experience, Trivett said there was zero privacy and he could hear doctors talking to other patients about their conditions.
“Everyone was being treated around me.  I could hear them,” he said.
“I heard the doctor say, ‘we’ve got to drain it’ … if you’re hesitant, that’s not where you want to be.”
Emergency room wait times across Ontario hit an all-time high in September.
According to Health Quality Ontario (HQO) data, patients spent an average of 21.3 hours in an emergency room waiting to be admitted.  This is up from 20.7 hours in August and 20.8 hours in July.
Earlier this week, the Ontario Liberals said this September was “the worst September on record since 2008.”
“No matter how you look at this data, whether it’s month-over-month or year-over-year, health care performance continues its dramatic decline and, unfortunately, is now in free fall,” he told reporters. Dr. Adil Shamji.  conference on Wednesday.
An Ontario Health report provided to executives and heads of emergency departments and leaked by Shamji showed an average of about 946 patients were waiting for a hospital bed in an emergency room across the province at 8 a.m. each day that month.
“I think about my most recent days in the emergency department, when we have a particularly heavy day, and patients are waiting for an inpatient bed and there isn’t one, so they take up acute care beds in our emergency department that are reserved for new patients.” , said Shamji.
“And when there are no facilities for new patients to be assessed, treated and treated.  They are moving into non-conventional spaces.”
The report also showed that ambulance discharge times increased by around 52.5 per cent in the last year, meaning patients waited an average of around 90 minutes before entering a hospital in September.
That particular part of the procedure involved Trivett, who watched the same nurses who brought him in stick around to monitor his vitals and escort him to the bathroom.
“They couldn’t leave me unattended,” she said.  “I felt bad for them because they were off the road.
“Basically it meant those two and that one ambulance were out of commission for the time they were with me, which wasn’t the best situation.”
He said he also noticed a number of patients seeking care for things like respiratory illnesses who were eventually sent home after seeing a doctor.
The Ontario government has pledged to add up to 6,000 new health care workers as part of its plan to stabilize health care after the pandemic.  They also said they would invest in private clinic practices and introduce legislation allowing hospitals to transfer patients awaiting long-term care to a home they would not choose — two ideas they hope will free up hospital beds for acute care patients.
“When you’re feeling crappy, you’re not going to languish in an ER chair,” Trivett said.  “I think the worst thing for me was being in the ER and being moved three times and hearing and seeing everything.  You have mental health patients, you have elderly people who have had a stroke or a heart attack, they are at the end of their lives and with zero dignity.  It’s kind of sad.  The system is very broken.”