Kingston Health Sciences Center (KHSC) says new hours at its urgent care center aim to make access more predictable, despite concerns that service is being reduced.
Starting Wednesday, July 22, the urgent care center at Hotel Dieu Hospital will register patients from 8am to 4pm Monday to Friday and 8am to 2pm on weekends.
The change shortens the center’s posted hours, but KHSC executive vice president of patient care Jason Hann says patient care won’t stop when enrollment closes.
“This is not about reducing access to urgent care,” Hann said. “Our goal is to provide more reliable and predictable access.”
KHSC has limited the number of patients admitted daily since July 2022 due to physician staffing challenges.
Hann said the center has often reached that limit by 11 a.m., noon or 1 p.m., forcing enrollment to close earlier than patients expected.
Under the new model, KHSC hopes patients will be able to rely on registration remaining open during posted hours, rather than arriving later in the day and finding the center has already stopped accepting patients.
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“Our goal is that we don’t see fewer patients,” Hann said. “Our goal is that we want to see more patients with established hours.”
Patients who register shortly before the end will still be assessed and treated.
Hann said doctors and staff will stay at the center after registration closes, sometimes as late as 8 p.m., to complete assessments, imaging, lab work and other care.
“It’s not like at four o’clock, if you check in at 3:50, they won’t see you and you have to be out by four o’clock,” he said.
The change has raised questions about where patients with urgent but not life-threatening concerns should go after registration closes, especially when many clinics are no longer open.
Hann acknowledged that some patients may instead go to the emergency department at Kingston General Hospital, but said KHSC has not seen evidence that the previous enrollment limits caused a significant increase in emergency department volumes.
He said patients arriving in the emergency department are increasingly dealing with more complex and acute medical issues.
Kingston and the Islands MPP Ted Hsu said the new schedule more accurately reflects the resources currently available.
“If you have an after-hours problem and you’re not covered by a clinic that offers an after-hours service, then you should go to an emergency room,” Hsu said.
He said he doesn’t expect the change itself to add more pressure to the emergency department because the urgent care center was regularly closing registrations early.
“This is not a reflection of the cuts,” Hsu said. “They’re just trying to set expectations on what the reality is, but we have to keep working to increase the capacity of our health care system.”
On Saturdays and Sundays, KHSC will also reassign an urgent care physician shift to the KGH emergency department during the evening to help reduce wait times.
Hann said KHSC continues to recruit emergency physicians and may expand urgent care registration hours if staffing improves.
The hospital said enrollment could still close early in exceptional circumstances if the clinical team determined it could not safely accept more patients.
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