Infographic: When should you head to the ER?

Whether it’s the holiday baked goods or ’tis the season of nasty winter weather, a trip to emergency may seem like the only option when you’re sick.

Hospital wait times often increase significantly at the end of December and early January.

In October this year, patients waited an average 1.6 hours in Ontario emergency rooms before being seen by a doctor.

“We see probably a 30 to 40 per cent bump over what we would see routinely even in the winter time,” Dr. Jason Fischer, the head of Paediatric Emergency Medicine at SickKids said. “So we are seeing lots of kids.”

SickKids says more than two out of three medical concerns could be addressed somewhere other than emergency — like at an urgent care clinic or family doctor.

Source: SickKids

Healthcare professionals often attribute the increase in numbers to people not knowing where else they can go or when they should or should not make their way to emergency.

Empower Health is a group working on creating an interactive and mapped out website to help find health care when and where people need it at this time of year.

“We noticed specifically related to holidays and surge, there’s a big gap in terms of information that was available to patients,” Empower Health’s founder, Ryan Doherty said.

HolidayHours.ca identifies walk in clinics, pharmacies, medical labs, family doctors and physiotherapists as alternatives to a hospital emergency room.