600+ of Canada's 800+ emergency departments publish no wait time information at all. In Saskatchewan, as far as I can tell, not one of 76 does.
None in Newfoundland either.
What we need for modeling already exists in most emergency department information systems.
Count of triaged patients not yet seen by a physician
Minutes since arrival of the longest-waiting one.
Those are the two terms of a queue. How long the line is, and how old the head of it is. With those numbers we can model queue drain rate. Physicians on shift sharpens it further, if your scheduling system allows for it.
A scheduled CSV or JSON at a URL every few minutes is great. A charge nurse typing three numbers into a form two or three times a shift also works.
These are not huge asks, and none of it is patient data. No names, no diagnoses, no identifiers. A count and a clock.
Quebec already publishes the count for all 119 hospitals on its public dashboard, and about two dozen Ontario hospitals already publish the longest wait.
A hospital doesn't need an entirely new vendor or system to deal with this. ERstat is offering to work out the models for free.
We publish our error rate beside it. This is early work and we will get things wrong, which is exactly why the accuracy is public.
erstat.ca/for-hospitals
Work in a Canadian ER?
Three numbers a shift turns your hospital's ERstat estimate into a measured one: patients waiting, longest current wait, physicians on.
20 seconds from your phone. Free, no app, no password, no patient data.
erstat.ca/join
#ERnurses #ERdoctors
For anyone heading to a Canadian ER this weekend: live wait times at erstat.ca. Saturday evenings into Sunday mornings tend to be the busiest windows across most hospitals. A pharmacist or walk-in is often faster for non-urgent conditions.
Newfoundland has collected ER data since 2011. It shares none of it with the public. Doesn't even report to CIHI. 0 of 24 hospitals publish wait times while rural ERs run on Virtual ER with no in-person doctor most of the week. erstat.ca/transparency/nl @CBCMarkQuinn @CBCNL #nlpoli
643 ER closures in 18 months (Nov 2023–May 2025). The SHA tracks them in real time internally — but won't share it publicly. Full breakdown: erstat.ca/transparency/sk @jaredclarkeNDP @AlexanderQuon @Sask_NDP #skpoli
erstat.ca
Built something I think Canada needed. One place to check real-time ER wait times across the country. 700+ hospitals, free, no sign-up.