New numbers from NLHS show a significant increase in wait times at emergency rooms and a drop in medical procedures following the implementation of CorCare.

Data through May 9 showed ER wait times spiked from just over two hours to nearly three and a half hours for an initial assessment by a physician.

It also revealed that surgeries fell from 576 to 391 in a one-week period, lab tests fell by some 30-thousand to 173-thousand, while medical imaging exams and endoscopy services fell by some 25-30 per cent.

NLHS Interim CEO Ron Johnson says many of those numbers are coming down and he expects times to drop once staff get up to speed.

“Emergency room wait times have been long in Newfoundland, but they’re long all across Canada. That’s an issue. This system should help with this,” he told reporters.

“There’s one piece of this system that was put in for emergency room use. It’s called an EDIS, an Emergency Department Information System. Often in busy emergency rooms, it’s a lot of chaos, and often, sometimes you can lose track of what’s happening. Now, with this EDIS system, everything is timestamped. You can’t lose track of it. It’s in your face.”