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Diagnosed with febrile neutropenia, a medical emergency for cancer patients, Christina quickly received IV antibiotics and was told she needed to be admitted.

But no in-patient beds were available. Instead, Christina remained in the emergency department. It would take 40 hours for her to get moved to an inpatient bed.

“I was terrified for her,� said her husband, Dr. Adam Shehata, a family physician.

He said Christina received appropriate care in the ED but waiting near other patients put her at high risk for an infection.

“The area she was in was essentially a row of hospital gurneys separated only by curtains with sick patients on either side of her,� Adam said. “Her risk of infection was so high and there was nothing I could do to protect her.�

Across Ontario, patients are waiting hours — sometimes days — in EDs, a problem that has gotten substantially worse over the last three years, according to provincial data obtained by the Star.

In many hospitals, patients waiting in the ED are being treated in hallways, storage areas and other unconventional spaces due to a lack of beds elsewhere in the hospital. This kind of “hallway medicine� frustrates patients but also risks their health and puts further stress on hospital staff struggling to cope in crowded conditions.

Health-care issues, including the family doctor shortage and hallway medicine, have emerged as key issues in the Feb. 27 snap election. During his 2018 campaign, Doug Ford promised to end hallway health care, making the pledge a key part of the Progressive Conservative platform.

Four months after getting elected, Ford stated, and said it was “unacceptable� for patients to wait hours to see a doctor or to get care in hospital hallways.

“Since then, it’s gone from bad to worse,� said Dr. Raghu Venugopal, an emergency physician in Toronto. “What bad hallway medicine was has only deteriorated to chair- and waiting-room medicine.�

Venugopal cites a long list of conditions he had to treat in hospital chairs, including a brain bleed, a broken spine, a bowel obstruction and a heart attack.

Research shows patients who “board� for hours in the ED, particularly older patients, .

“It isn’t just that patients get treated in hallways,� said Dr. Andrew Petrosoniak, an emergency physician and trauma team leader at St. Michael’s Hospital. “Patients who require hospital-level care, their risk of death goes up the longer they’re in the emergency department. You can debate the percentages, but there is a not insignificant increase in mortality.�

A report by Ontario Health, not previously made public, shows that between April 2022 and October 2024, wait times for patients needing an in-patient bed at the 90th percentile ranged from roughly 32 hours to just over 40 hours. This means 90 per cent of patients stayed in the ED for these lengths of time or less but 10 per cent stayed longer. Pre-pandemic, wait times for an in-patient bed at the 90th percentile ranged roughly from 20 to 30 hours.

Experts say a combination of factors are leading to extended ED waits: an insufficient number of hospital beds to admit new patients; a lack of long-term-care and home-care options, meaning patients who no longer need acute care have to remain in hospital; people relying on EDs due to a shortage of family doctors and difficulties getting diagnostic imaging and specialist care; and ongoing staffing shortages that limit how many patients hospitals can treat quickly.

In recent years, hospitals have seen a rise in the number of very sick patients coming to the ED. These more complex patients, many with a combination of chronic illnesses, require more time to stabilize, assess and treat, which leads to longer wait times for other patients.

“We’re seeing more and more frail elderly, and the complexity of the cases that we’re seeing is that much greater,� said Ottawa-based emergency physician Dr. James Worrall, who noted that Ontario’s population of people over 65 has increased dramatically in the past 20 years.

Since 2018, the Ford government has added 3,500 new hospital beds and has said 3,000 more are in the pipeline, tied to 50 new hospital projects. The province has said it has also made significant investments in long-term care. Before the election, the PCs pledged a $1.4 billion investment to connect every Ontarian to primary care by 2029.

In a statement, the Ministry of Health noted the province’s “ED landscape and patient demographic have evolved over the years in particular from the pandemic experience,� an issue “not unique to Ontario.�

Adam, who took Christina to Kingston General Hospital on Feb. 9, said he does not blame the hospital or its staff for her long wait. He said doctors and nurses provided excellent care and understood the couple’s worries, but said they couldn’t move her due to capacity issues.

During the overnight hours, it got so loud that hospital staff gave Christina earplugs. Earlier that evening, Adam said, nearby patients were ill and coughing and a patient next to Christina had to use a commode.

“The stench was everywhere,� said Adam, who was told no isolation rooms were available. “Everyone can understand why they wouldn’t want their sick wife, who doesn’t have the ability to fight off infection, beside someone who is defecating on one side and coughing on the other.�

After more than 24 hours, Adam said Christina was moved out of the area with curtained-off gurneys and into a room with a door that closed. Though still in the ED, Adam said the new space offered more privacy and protection.

In a statement, Kingston Health Sciences Centre (KHSC) said it has experienced a “sustained increase in patient volumes and continues to operate at high capacity� like many hospitals in Canada. It said this is primarily due to “population growth, as well as a growing number of patients with more complex needs than ever before.�

KHSC said its teams are “committed to providing timely, high-quality, safe care� and that “rooms and care space allocation� is based on “several factors, including patient acuity and specific medical needs.�

Dr. Candace McNaughton, an emergency medicine physician at Sunnybrook hospital, said the challenges Ontario EDs face are more significant now than before COVID. She said individual hospitals and their staff are “doing everything they can with the limited resources they have,� but it’s not enough.

“Most of my health encounters start with, ‘I am so sorry for the wait,’ � she said.

Recent research led by McNaughton showed that since 2020, more adults are leaving Ontario EDs without being seen by a physician. The study, , found these patients face a 14 per cent higher risk of death or hospitalization within seven days when compared to patients who left the ED without being seen by a physician before 2020.

McNaughton, a scientist at Sunnybrook Research Institute, said the study raises a “concerning signal� that should prompt system-wide policy interventions.

“There’s something wrong with the system; people are not doing as well as they did pre-2020,� she said.

After three days, Christina left the hospital following antibiotic treatment and she’s now well enough to resume cancer therapy. She said she hopes her experience will highlight longstanding system challenges and push politicians to act.

“It was ridiculous what I experienced,� Christina said. “People lining the hallways. People behind these flimsy curtains. People not able to get seen by a doctor or get admitted right away.

“It shouldn’t be this way.�