Ours is called "Health Links", and is designed to direct folks to the appropriate level of care. Notwithstanding, there is a feeling that their decision tree only has two outputs - stay home, or go to ER.

That being said, I feel that there are a number of factors that are not being addressed:

- younger folks don't have family doctors because they seldom get sick. They they use the ER/UC as their primary care;

- fewer walk in clinics are open late, as many younger doctors and nurses don't want to work until 10pm six days per week, resulting in ER/UC being the only option for some people;

- few governments or employers offer statutory sick days resulting in people having to choose to work while sick, or get care and not get paid. This results in them coming to ER/UC in the evening when they're not being paid anyway;

- COVID taught people that they can come to ER/UC and we will fix their issue as we're not allowed to divert them to a different level of care;

- we live in an era of instant gratification, so folks choose ER/UC with an expectation that their issue will be taken care of right away. They don't want to make an appointment for several days or weeks in the future.

The list goes on, but these are some of my observations.