Emergency care worse for First Nations: study

Hospital emergency rooms in Alberta are likely to assess complaints from First Nations people as less urgent than those from other patients, even when their problems are the same, says a new study that looked at millions of such visits. “If people have a long bone fracture, you might expect the treatment would be the same between groups,” said Patrick McLane of the University of Alberta, a co-author of the study published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. “First Nations people in emergency departments were less likely to get the higher triage score, which would result in higher urgency of treatment.” McLane and his colleagues analyzed more than 11 million emergency room visits between 2012 and 2017 from all across Alberta. Overall, the study found 12 per cent of non-Indigenous patients were rated at the most serious levels, whereas eight per cent of First Nations people received that rating.