Edmonton zone hospitals told to take extra inpatients to ease emergency room pressure
CBC
A long weekend surge of patients and increasing number of hospital units under stress has prompted Alberta Health Services to purposefully place inpatients in hallways.
A memo sent to doctors Tuesday working in Edmonton zone hospitals says every hospital unit should be taking one more patient than it has room for to help free up space in emergency rooms, and that all units need to have a hallway patient at all times.
"This is being done to support patient flow throughout the entire Edmonton Zone and keep EMS available in the community," Alberta Health Services spokesperson James Wood said in a Wednesday email.
AHS also told staff to review inpatients to see who could go home or return to long-term care centres to make space in hospitals.
Wood said the measures aren't "the preferred method to provide care" but are necessary for the next 24 to 36 hours.
Hospitals are also seeing more patients who require isolation, he said. He didn't say by publication time whether the hospital outbreaks and patients needing isolation are because of COVID-19.
Dr. Paul Parks, president of the emergency medicine section of the Alberta Medical Association, says it's alarming to see hospitals being told to take surge measures during the summer, which is usually the slowest time of year.
"That's how bad our current state is right now, that we have to implement these policies and processes so that we can care for the next sick people that are out in the waiting room," said Parks, who is also an emergency room doctor in Medicine Hat.
He said the scenario does not bode well for the coming fall, when respiratory infection rates typically prompt more hospitalizations.
Hospitals stretched to their limits and ERs have a trickle-down effect on ambulance services, which have also been taxed in Alberta.
Parks said when there are no beds in emergency rooms, paramedics must wait with their patient until they can hand them off into the hospital's care, and this leads to a shortage of available ambulances.
Although the Edmonton area is the eye of the current storm, he says conditions are similar in emergency rooms across the province.
Some health-care workers are already squeezing inpatients into unconventional spaces such as storage rooms, he said.
"I would say it's absolutely disaster-mode operation kind of level," Parks said.
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