THUNDER BAY – Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre is exploring the return of elective surgeries to the hospital.
Dr. Stewart Kennedy said officials from all departments at the hospital were planning to meet on Wednesday to discuss ways the facility could return to normal operations, knowing COVID-19 is still in the community.
“Hopefully we’re going to have a plan that can actually begin to address elective surgery, that we can present it to the Ministry of Health and get the approval of the Ministry of Health to begin a slow increase in our elective surgeries beginning next week,” said Kennedy, who heads the hospital’s COVID-19 response team.
It will have to be done in stages, he said.
The first week or two might see surgeries increase by 25 per cent. At that point they can judge how much personal protective equipment and drug supply the facility has, not to mention the human resources it will take to bring back elective surgeries, cancelled province-wide when the pandemic struck in March.
“Hopefully we’ll gradually increase that until we get back to normal operations. But when I say normal operations, that will never be back to normal as we were four months ago. It’s going to take quite an assertive effort regarding budget, regarding human resources to get back to 100 per cent,” Kennedy said, “and then to get through the backlog, you’ll have to increase it even further to deal with the backlog.”
At some point, it could mean switching to offering elective surgeries seven days a week.
It also depends on hospital capacity, which has crept up to about 75 per cent with higher priority surgeries being conducted.
“The mandate in some parts of the province is (no more than) 85 per cent occupancy, but they’ve allowed us, because we’re the only acute-care hospital in Northwestern Ontario, to be at 90 per cent occupancy,” Kennedy said. “But it fluctuates. Some days we’ll have 85, some days we’ll have 92. It’s a moving target.”
Kennedy added there is a bit of staff apprehension at the thought of climbing back to normal operations, but that’s not surprising.
Health-care workers have been on the pandemic’s front lines since the beginning, and even this week several staff members were sent home because of exposure to a COVID-19 patient.
Kennedy said he’s confident of staff safety, adding there are plenty of safeguards in place at this time.
