I should know better than to get involved...

"Scott Weiser" wrote:


From your analysis, could I, however, walk from one hospital in Toronto
to another to improve my position?

I doubt it. It's my guess that once you get assigned a priority, based on
the government-mandated priority criteria, you're stuck with it, and no
matter where you go, you end up behind others with higher priority. That a
different facility may not have the same number of people in line before you
is irrelevant. Moreover, I have my doubts that you would be allowed, once
assigned a priority at a hospital in your local community, to simply "venue
shop" in another city, thereby jumping the queue of those above you in your
original community. However, this is a guess, and I could be wrong.

You are wrong.

The number of people in front of you does matter. There is no "government-assigned" priority. Each hospital that you venue shop
into rates your priority and serves you as they can, with those they feel are more in need of treatment first. If you leave one
hospital after being told your wait will be X hours, and go to another hospital, a nurse or doctor there might think you've got
something more serious than the person who triaged you in the first hospital, you'll get a different priority. But even if they
give you the same priority, if the second hospital has fewer people lined up in front of you with equal or greater priority, you'll
get helped sooner.

A relative was driving long distance to a family function last week. He decided to seek treatment for an infection on the way at
the hospital in Clearwater BC. He was in and out in under an hour. Arriving at the family function he commented on that, and
another relative, who lives in Kamloops BC, a decent sized city about an hour's drive from Clearwater, said that people in Kamloops
would often drive to Clearwater to go to the hospital (for minor emergency room treatment), knowing that the two hour round trip dri
ve would save them more time than that waiting in the Kamloops emergency room.

For certain specialized treatments (available only at certain hospitals), you are closer to being correct. But for minor, routine
stuff, you can "venue shop" all you want to try to find the shortest wait time.

-Paul