TORONTO - Visit a hospital emergency room, and you are likely to see kids. And that's especially true if your trip takes place in the evening or on the weekend, new data released Thursday shows.
One in four emergency department visits in Ontario were made by children in 2005-2006, the report reveals.
The most common time of those visits was between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. and the most common day was Sunday. By contrast, the most common day for adult visits to Ontario emergency departments was Monday and the most common time was 10 a.m. to 11 a.m.
The data, released by the Canadian Institute for Health Information, shows that 685,000 children made more than one million visits to Ontario emergency departments during the study period. The report looked at visits by children from newborns to those aged 17.
Nearly one in three visited the emergency department more than once in the year and one in 15 made a return visit within 72 hours of the previous one.
The youngest kids made the highest numbers of visits, with children aged one to four making up nearly a third of the hospital visits by children. That works out to more than one visit for every two children between the ages of one and four in Ontario, CIHI says.
Children tended to face slightly shorter wait times for care than adults, with about half completing their emergency department visit in under two hours. But for some children, the visit was considerably longer. While one in 10 were in and out within 35 minutes, an equal number spent five hours or more in the emergency department.
Nearly 50,000 children left before their visit was completed and 13 per cent of those kids returned within 72 hours, the health statistics agency's report suggests.
"Health planners can use this information as a starting point to examine what health services are available outside of the hospital setting in their area," Marilyn Booth, executive director of the Provincial Council for Children's Health, says of the findings.
"There may be opportunities to help new parents, particularly first-time parents, to identify and understand common medical conditions they are likely to encounter in the first year of their child's life."