Health Sciences North has announced that they will be rescheduling most inpatient surgeries that were planned for the week of Sept. 7.
According to a news bulletin released by the hospital on Sept. 4, Health Sciences North is currently at 104 per cent capacity, despite having 34 temporary beds opened at the Clarion Hotel.
At the time of the bulletin's release, Health Sciences North had 114 alternative level care (ALC) patients, with 53 of those patients awaiting long-term care beds and 11 waiting to be place in homes or community care.
Since June 1, the hospital has been ramping up its surgeries, and is currently perfrming 70 per cent of historical surgical volumes. In its original recovery plans that were developed in May, HSN was hoping to ramp up surgeries to 95 per cent of their usual volumes.
"Unfortunately because of the limited flow of patients out of HSN, the hospital is not able to increase its volume of inpatient surgeries as originally planned at this time," said the HSN bulletin.
"HSN will continue to monitor the situation on a daily basis and make every effort possible to resume plans to increase surgical volumes as soon as it is safe to do so."
A backlog created by cancelled surgeries due to COVID-19 means the hospital currently has a waitlist of 4,207 surgeries, compared to 3,724 at this time last year.
In order to free up space to resume plans to ramp up surgeries, HSN is actively approaching families of its patients waiting for long-term care to work with them to expand their facility choices to include all local long term care homes.
This may mean patients who are deemed ALC would be offered long term beds in the coming weeks and temporarily accommodated until a bed in their long term care home of choice becomes available.
