THUNDER BAY – Increased patient volumes at the regional hospital that were believed to be a temporary result of a harsh flu season earlier this year have shown little signs of slowing down, though the expanded off-site transitional care unit is helping ease pressure.
The Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre has spent more than 90 per cent of the year operating in surge capacity, with only a stretch of 27 days during the summer when every funded bed wasn’t occupied.
“I think we’re trying to think about it as the new normal in terms of preparing operations to be dealing with this,” said Dr. Peter Voros, the hospital’s executive vice president of inpatient care programs, on Tuesday.
“Certainly we did have a big flu season last year. We don’t exactly know what to expect this year in terms of the flu. We do expect an increase. We always do.”
With the hospital bursting at the seams, as one official described it in early January, a transitional care unit was established at Hogarth Riverview Manor through a partnership with St. Joseph’s Care Group. Started in January, the unit was planned to operate through the end of March but has remained throughout the year.
The number of patients in that unit has increased throughout the year, beginning with 32, and now having doubled to a 64-bed capacity with increased funding from the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care through the North West Local Health Integration Network.
The hospital had been averaging 460 admitted patients throughout November with a peak of 491 at the end of the month. On Tuesday, there were 452 patients with 398 of those at the hospital site and 54 at Hogarth Riverview Manor.
The health sciences centre is funded as a 375-bed hospital, though it has received provincial dollars for an additional 14 beds.
“As those beds increase out in the community for us, the number in the hospital decreases,” Voros said. “It’s a significant improvement in capacity and our ability to function here within the acute care setting.”
Voros said the number of patients tends to drop before the holidays before the brunt of flu season hits just after Christmas.
Considering there had been as many as 450 patients within the hospital last year, Voros said the transitional care unit should have the facility more able to manoeuver higher patient volumes during the months ahead.
“We would expect this year going into the flu season that we would be in a better position because 64 of those patients who would have been occupying beds are not in the building this year,” Voros said.
The patient roster includes 90 alternate level of care patients, who are awaiting transfer to long-term care homes or another supported environment.
Voros said the alternate level of care patients in the transitional care unit at Hogarth Riverview Manor are receiving more appropriate care at that facility, which has often led to improvement in their conditions.
The hospital remains able to treat emergency and acute needs, Voros said, though he added that circumstances might not be perfect.
“If (patients are) admitted to hospital they may wait a little longer in the emergency room before we have a bed to move them to,” Voros said.
“If they have coverage for a private room they may not get a private room because we may not have one available. They may be in a space that isn’t what we would have called a traditional bed space, so we’ve created other spaces out of what were treatment rooms in our units that have now become a space.”
