THUNDER BAY - As the number of COVID-19 cases in the district continues to decline, the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre is increasing capacity slightly to allow for more urgent and emergent surgeries and procedures.
“Given the current state of COVID-19, both in the province and in our community specifically and given the fact that we haven’t received any critical care transfers, we are cautiously adding increased capacity back into our system to proportionally balance the need to be ready versus the need to continue urgent and emergent surgeries in our community,” said TBRHSC president and CEO, Rhonda Crocker Ellacott.
In April, the provincial government ordered all non-urgent surgeries to be put on hold under a directive through the Health Protection and Promotion Act. The directive was implemented in an effort to deal with hospitals facing capacity issues in the face of a devastating third wave.
The Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre reduced capacity for urgent and emergent procedures down to 50 per cent but it will be increased to 70 per cent starting next week.
“That enables us to balance proportionally the needs of our community for urgent and emergent surgeries and procedures while being able to quickly pivot and respond if the COVID-19 situation should that change either in our community or at the provincial level,” Crocker Ellacott said.
The hospital will still only be conducting urgent or emergent surgeries and procedures, but increasing capacity to 70 per cent will allow clinicians to provide more opportunities for the growing list of people waiting for care.
“We have seen increasing numbers of patients waiting that we would deem to be urgent or emergent, so we felt proportionally we had the obligation to make some changes given our capacity in our Health Sciences Centre,” Crocker Ellacott said.
There are currently six people admitted to the TBRHSC with COVID-19 and two in the intensive care unit.
Clinicians will use four principals to determine which procedures move forward, including proportionality, minimizing harm to patients, equity, and reciprocity.
Increasing capacity for urgent and emergent procedures by only 20 per cent still allows the hospital to respond to an increase in COVID-19 patients from the community or surrounding region or critical care transfers from other parts of the province.
The hospital has taken several critical care patients from southern Ontario, but most transfers take place over land to close institutions as opposed to air travel to Northwestern Ontario.
“The hospital has to continue to maintain capacity for a shifting tide of COVID. So we need to ensure that should the province ask us to quickly take on a several transfers of critical care patients that we are ready, or if we see a surge of COVID-19 patients in our community or our region, that we are quickly able to adapt, admit, and care for those patients,” Crocker Ellacott said.
“We are confident that with a small increase in capacity that we will still be able to be ready and flexible to pivot back and respond to the needs.”
