WATERLOO REGION – Hospitals in the region are operating at full capacity, dealing with a growing backlog of surgeries that is expected to take the better part of a year to complete.
With each of the three hospitals, Grand River Hospital, St. Mary’s General Hospital, and Cambridge Memorial Hospital, returning to roughly 85 percent of pre-pandemic surgery levels, a new variant of COVID-19 makes hospital administrators discuss priorities if cases increase in the province once again.
“We often experience an increased need for care in the winter months and we are planning our response to that. Layered on that is COVID and what this new variant could mean. “Said St. Mary’s General Hospital President Lee Fairclough, who also serves as the region’s hospital leader for its response to COVID-19.
Health officials in South Africa, where COVID-19 cases averaged between 200 and 300 cases a day in mid-November, said the country recorded 8,500 new cases a day on Wednesday.
A statement from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, South Africa’s national institute of public health, said Thursday that the Omicron variant “is rapidly becoming the dominant variant.”
This is not the case in Ontario, where the Delta variant remains under control, but the province has reported five cases of Omicron and will be monitoring future positive cases to determine the extent of its spread.
Meanwhile, daily cases are increasing in the province, with Ontario reporting 959 new cases Thursday. Although hospitalization cases in the region remain low (11 as of Thursday), hospital activity in general is in full swing.
At St. Mary’s, for example, the hospital has 196 beds available, including 35 ICU beds. During the past week, the hospital averaged more than 100 percent capacity.
This is true throughout the region.
At Cambridge Memorial Hospital, spokesperson Stephan Beckhoff reports that it is at 101% capacity, with 80% of ICU beds occupied. Meanwhile, the Grand River Hospital in Kitchener has averaged between 90 and 95 percent of its capacity over the past week.
Grand River spokeswoman Cheryl Evans said Thursday that the hospital has seen an increase in COVID in its ICU population over the past week and had to temporarily open an additional four-bed ICU space to handle the need for a increased fan support.
“We have designated some of the beds in our medication program to serve less acutely COVID patients,” he said. “If there is a need for more space to improve care, we would designate additional space for the drug program to do so.”
When it comes to surgeries, there is a long backlog to deal with.
Each hospital has returned to approximately 85 percent of pre-pandemic levels when it comes to surgeries, and it will take time to catch up.
Any kind of reversal due to an increase in COVID-19 cases can exacerbate the problem.
At St. Mary’s, excluding cardiac cases, the hospital reports it has more than 7,000 surgeries on the waiting list, about 5,000 are ophthalmology cases. At Cambridge Memorial, there are about 2,000 surgeries on the waiting list, with cataract-specific surgeries taking up almost half. And in Grand River, it is increasing its number of operating rooms to cope with the backlog of around 2,000 surgeries, adding a seventh in January and an eighth in March.
“We expect to have eight (ORs) up and running by the end of March and we think it will take all of next year to catch up,” Evans said.
Those deferred surgeries, along with a general population that stayed away from the hospital for 20 months, is starting to take their toll.
“People who go to the emergency department are more seriously ill,” Fairclough said. “I think some of that is related to some delays in care, it may be related to the inability to access care in the community, and we are opening up more, so you will see more spread in other types of viruses. “
All of this comes at a time when hospitals are working with increased bed capacity compared to pre-pandemic levels, and not with increased staffing.
“We probably have more staff at any given time working in the hospital, but we still don’t have the full complement that we need to support all those beds all the time,” Fairclough said.
All three hospitals in the region are embarking on recruitment drives, using new funds to train staff at the hospital.
Hospitals have managed through the entire pandemic relying on staff to take on additional shifts beyond their normal work hours.
As the pandemic has progressed, Fairclough said, the ability and desire of those staff members to continue doing those shifts has diminished, and new challenges are emerging to fill those shifts: “The pandemic has been long for all of us, and we are starting to see those effects. “
Hospital management, like the public, now eagerly awaits more information on the variant to determine how it will need to prepare if cases start to spike.
Fairclough said hospitals in the region will prioritize and adapt as needed.
Robert Williams is a reporter for The Record in the Waterloo region. Contact him by email: [email protected]
Reference-www.thestar.com