‘It’s like Grand Central Station and you’re stuck right in the middle of it’
March 7, 2025
By Joanna Frketich, Reporter
The son of a Stoney Creek cancer patient said the 90 year-old army veteran spent three days in the emergency department and the busy hallway of a hospital ward with painful stroke-like symptoms.
Glenn McGillivray said his dad had little privacy or dignity in a hallway that resembled “Grand Central Station” at Hamilton General Hospital while waiting to find out whether he’d had a stroke, an infection or cancer that had spread to his brain.
The senior was brought to the hospital by paramedics after McGillivray said his dad fell at home around 4 a.m. on Feb. 22, hit his head and started having issues with the use of his left side.
McGillivray described his dad as being in “pretty rough shape” and “excruciating pain” during his time in the ward hallway on Feb. 23 and 24 after spending more than 24 hours in the emergency department.
“This is rampant. This is what you’re hearing all over the place,” McGillivray said about hallway medicine. “But when it’s your elderly father, it hits harder … Real people are suffering.”
The Spectator is not naming McGillivray’s dad because he was too ill to be interviewed for this story.
The senior’s plight comes at the same time an internal provincial report obtained by the Star found Ontario patients visiting emergency departments in the past three years waited longer than they did in the previous 13 years.
The Star reported Feb. 22 that the data, prepared by Ontario Health but not made public, shows that wait times for ambulance off-loads, initial physician assessments and admissions to in-patient beds became notably worse in the last three years, while patients spent more time overall in emergency departments.
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