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For some Quebecers, watching the Montreal Canadiens take to the ice during the Stanley Cup playoffs is more urgent than seeking medical care.
Hospital officials in the Montreal area say their emergency rooms generally saw dips in visits during game nights of the first round of the playoffs as the Habs defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning in a seven-game series.
Zackary Levine, chief of emergency medicine at McGill University Health Centre, said many people are likely delaying non-urgent care until after the final whistle of the games.
As a result, the hockey team is providing some temporary relief for overcrowded emergency rooms that routinely operate above capacity at the centre, which operates one of the largest academic networks of hospitals in North America.
“People really want to watch the game,” Levine said in an interview. “Perhaps people don’t mind missing work as much as they mind missing a playoff hockey game.”
It’s a pattern that mirrors what has sometimes happened during other major sporting events in Canada.
A peer-reviewed Canadian study published in 2011 found that emergency room visits in Ontario fell by 17 per cent during the men’s hockey final at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, when Canada defeated the United States in overtime — a decline equivalent to roughly 136 fewer patients per hour.
Across Quebec more broadly, ERs have also generally reported slightly fewer visits during recent Canadiens games, says Santé Québec, the provincial agency that oversees the public health-care system.
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“At the provincial level, we’ve observed a slight decrease,” said agency spokesperson Catherine Brousseau. She noted there were, on average, about 100 fewer patients in multiple Quebec regions, including all of the regions surrounding Montreal, between 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. on playoff game nights compared with non-game nights.
Levine said the pattern is visible enough to notice in real time at the McGill teaching hospitals.
Levine said both the Royal Victoria Hospital and the Montreal General Hospital — two of the city’s busiest health-care facilities — typically see fewer people waiting in the ER during playoff games.
On May 1, as the Canadiens lost Game 6 of their series to the Lightning in an exciting Friday night game that ended 1-0 in overtime, the Montreal General Hospital reported an occupancy rate of around 135 per cent in its emergency room, compared with an average of about 159 per cent. At the Royal Victoria Hospital, the occupancy rate that evening was nearly 167 per cent compared to its average of 205 per cent.
But once the game is over, emergency rooms can see “a return to normal levels or a slight increase,” according to Ellen Caracas, a spokesperson for the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal, the largest French-language network of teaching hospitals in Quebec.
The same phenomenon appears to extend beyond hospital walls.
Urgences-santé — the public ambulance service covering Montreal and Laval, responsible for 911 medical response and pre-hospital emergency care — said ambulance calls tend to dip during Canadiens games, and then rise again once the games are over.
“It becomes more noticeable during the playoffs,” said spokesperson Thamara Antoine-Germain, though she stressed there is no formal data set available.
But not all hospitals report the same pattern. The Montreal Children’s Hospital — a pediatric hospital specializing in care for infants, children and adolescents — said it has not seen a consistent link between Canadiens games and emergency room activity.
CHU Sainte-Justine — Quebec’s largest mother-and-child university hospital centre — also reports no clear correlation between game nights and emergency visits.
”There are times when parents watch the game in progress from the waiting room,” said Danika Landry, a spokesperson for the CHU Sainte-Justine.
Another hospital reported a surge in emergency cases on game nights.
At the Montreal Heart Institute — a specialized cardiology hospital affiliated with Université de Montréal — Dr. Audrey-Jane Hall, the ER chief, said health-care workers see a roughly 20 per cent increase in cardiac-related cases when a playoff game is on.
While the hospital said the data should be interpreted with caution, Hall warned that the emotional highs and lows of playoff hockey can carry real health risks.
“Reducing stress where possible and not watching alone if you’re at risk, that can make a difference,” she said.
Levine, meanwhile, encouraged patients with non-urgent concerns to consider clinics or Quebec’s 811 health line before going to emergency departments.
“And if you’re partying, don’t drive,” he added.
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