The North Bay Regional Health Centre has indicated earlier this week that they are experiencing longer than normal wait times.
"When patients first arrive at the ED, the sickest - or most emergent - patients are seen first," the North Bay Regional Health Centre stated on social media.
"Patients seeking non-urgent care can expect to experience high volumes and long wait times.
"You can visit our ED wait time tracker on our website along with a list of community resources for non-urgent needs including visiting other emergency departments in our district."
Emergency wait time counter can be found HERE.
See related: Hospital CEO reinforces severity of physician crisis
Paul Heinrich, the hospital CEO, has addressed the Emergency Department strain during a provincial funding announcement at the hospital earlier this month.
The family physician shortage in the city is leading many local residents without a doctor to head to the Emergency Department for treatment.
"We need probably double the number of core emergency doctors that we have right now, and so we're ramping up our recruitment efforts. But in the meantime, we've done a number of things to secure stability in the short term, with the use of some local physicians," he said.
Even if virtual care and more walk-in clinics popped up, Heinrich says there still are not enough providers to go around.
However, he believes there are some options.
"So I think part of the solution, though, is different types of providers and nurse practitioners are a big one," said Heinrich.
"I think we could continue to use many more nurse practitioners in our community. I'm hoping that primary care investment will have an impact on that in the near future, and we're aggressively recruiting doctors, and I think we'll be ultimately successful, because we have a lot of things going for us."
