This hospital had the longest wait time in Ontario last year. It’s using AI, private donors to speed up care

When Dr. Justin Hall started his 7 a.m. shift in the ER at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto on a recent Wednesday, there were already more than 60 patients waiting.

Sunnybrook is one of Canada’s busiest hospitals, with the largest trauma center and burn center in the country.

It also has the distinction of having the longest wait time in Ontario. In 2024, the average length of stay for patients at Sunnybrook was eight hours and 13 minutes.

This means that half of the patients in Sunnybrook’s emergency department had to wait even longer from the moment of first registration to the moment they left.

“It’s a big problem,” said Hall, who is Sunnybrook’s chief of emergency medicine.

But in July, the hospital started a pilot using artificial intelligence to help speed up service in the ER.

As Hall asks patients to describe their symptoms, an AI-enabled app called DAX Copilot listens from his pocket and acts as a scribe. The app organizes and summarizes conversations between doctor and patient.

Clinicians are able to input whatever they know about the patient before interacting – such as whether they’ve had blood work or tests. The doctor reviews AI-collected information, which is then transferred In the patient’s file.

Hall said that means doctors spend less time jotting down notes and focus more on people.

“When I see a patient, I can make decisions for them faster, trying to shorten the length of their stay here,” Hall said. He said that before using AI tools they get the patient’s consent.

Hall said the hospital is currently analyzing how much time the AI ​​trial is saving doctors. but in a Documents on its websiteSunnybrook says the app will reduce the time physicians spend on manual documentation by an average of seven minutes per encounter.

Hall said it “supports better interaction with the patient and reduces some of the cognitive burden (for the doctor) because it’s taking away some of that thought process… We still have to apply our medical knowledge to that, but it definitely reduces the administrative burden a little bit as well.”

Private donor dollars allow extra doctor to stay overnight

Sunnybrook is also looking beyond technology to find solutions – including using money from private donors.

When determining how many hours of physician coverage a hospital receives funding for, Ontario’s current funding model does not take into account the complexity of individual patients’ cases.

For example, during Hall’s recent shift, two patients were evaluated at the same triage level. Hall discharged one of them and advised him to take over-the-counter cough medicine. The second patient stayed for 12 hours, requiring multiple tests and seeing doctors from multiple departments.

Under the current system, the hospital gets the same amount of money for both patients.

Hall said Sunnybrook is using donations from private hospital fundsThey would have to add another doctor to the overnight rotation – something that many hospitals in the country are not able to do. The hospital says the night doctor is part of a temporary pilot study.

Sunnybrook says this has reduced the wait time to see a doctor in the emergency department by about 30 minutes.

“I’m grateful that we have donors that are willing to step forward here, because they see the potential and we’re able to show that in our results, in our data as well,” Hall said.

Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones declined an interview. Market About how the province is addressing long wait times.

In a statement, ministry spokeswoman Emma Popovic said the province has made “record investments” in health care over the past three years, including $44 million to tackle ER wait times.