By Cheryl Jahn

health care

Wait times at UHNBC among some of the best in the province

Jul 4, 2025 | 4:16 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – The University Hospital of Northern BC ranks fourth in the province in terms of length of stay at three hours and 12 minutes in the emergency room. That’s from the moment someone enters the ER to the moment they leave. Our hospital also ranks fifth in terms of how long a patient waits to doctor, at one hour and 18 minutes, which is one hour and fifteen minutes from the point of registration.

“The key to improving flow through the emergency room at UHNBC is actually improving flow through all of PG Health Services within the UHNBC campus,” says Shelley Barwise, Director of Clinical Operations. “We’ve been working very hard to have inpatients move in a timely way from the emergency room to an inpatient unit so that they can receive care from those folks who are trained specially to look after inpatients and leave the emergency bays for emergent and urgent cases.”

The Opposition is looking at an example of wait times in BC emergency rooms, citing Island Health’s candor with a website that shows the wait times at various emergency rooms, such as more than three hours at the Cowichan District Hospital in Duncan. “This is a response to a crisis to try to keep people safer,” says Anna Kindy, Health Critic. “So we’re at the point now that we have to let you know, patients know maybe if it’s not really urgent, don’t show up because you’re going to have to wait eight or 9 hours, which can not lead to good outcomes.”

But, while the successes Barwise refers to at UHNBC, there is always room for improvement. And she has a wish list.

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“We have we just finished a consultative process with Dr. Grant Innis and his partner, Sherry Stackhouse, to help us have a really good look at our space. They provided us with a list of 86 recommendations, which seems like a lot, but the Emergency Optimization Working Group, which is a group of senior leadership at the hospital unit leadership, our physician co-lead, Dr. Joanne Collins, have met, reviewed the 86 recommendations and have a plan to change the workflow in the emergency room.”

Compared to the rest of the country, BC is in the middle of the pack for wait times.