Union says online sign-in at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton is discriminatory

The union representing workers at St. Joseph’s Urgent Care Centre in Stoney Creek is blasting a new virtual registration pilot that will allow patients to self-register for urgent care before arriving at the emergency room.

While St. Joseph’s says the goal of the pilot is to reduce wait times, the union argues not everyone has access to technology to register ahead of getting to the ER, therefore only giving faster access to certain people.

“It’s discrimination dressed up as innovation,” says CUPE 786 President, Rick Rigby.

Standing outside the St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton King Campus in Stoney Creek on Wednesday, representatives of CUPE 786 and the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions say the new virtual-registration pilot at the ER ignores vulnerable people.

“Let me tell you why, these systems undermine services based on class, disability, and status, putting the better to do patients ahead of the queue,” says Rigby.

In a statement sent to CHCH News, the Deputy Chief of Emergency Medicine at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton, Dr. Shawn Mondoux, says patients who choose to use the virtual registration will be able to add information like their name, family doctor and any allergies in a secure private system.

He says this will speed up the registration process and allow staff to spend more time helping patients and connecting them to care.

Dr. Mondoux adds that all patients will still see a registration clerk and be assessed by a triage nurse who will place them in a queue based on urgency of symptoms.

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The union says hospital staff is not the issue when it comes to wait times.

“It’s the government’s direct attack on publicly funded healthcare services,” says Rigby. “Our registration staff only take minutes to register patients.”

“Mark Carney has given us millions of dollars to build up urgent care, and let’s do it, let’s build this urgent care to a capacity that people can actually come in and have a bed to sit in,” says Michelle Nevicato, an OCHU clerical representative.

St. Joseph’s says over the past few years, visits to the urgent care centre have risen by 32 per cent with more than 70,000 patients being seen each year.

It says that they are looking at innovative solutions that will connect people with care more efficiently while reducing the administrative burden on staff.

But the union believes some patients are still being left out.

“We see a lot of homeless, we are a mental health organization. We think this is going to directly affect those people who don’t have the ability to self-register and they actually have to come into the service,” says Rigby. “We start eliminating those staff to do that, that will possibly create a backlog.”

St. Joseph’s says virtual registration will be voluntary, registration in-person with staff will remain. Adding that no jobs will be affected by the new technology.

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