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There is no direct “cause and effect relationship” between the closure of 30 beds at Health Sciences North's former Memorial Hospital site and overcrowding in the emergency department, according to the hospital's senior vice-president, Joe Pilon.
He made the statements in the wake of a letter by the hospital's emergency room medical director, Dr. Rob Lepage, which was published by another local media outlet earlier this week.
Lepage said that closing the beds will “increase ED overcrowding, prolong our already excessive wait times, lead to further staff departures and expose patients to unnecessary risk.”
Pilon said all but one of the beds due to close in the unit, known as the Functional Assessment and Outcome Unit, have already been vacated.
The unit, which is now left with 30 beds, cares for ALC patients, or those who no longer require acute hospital care, but cannot find placement in a community facility such as a nursing home.
At the same time, the emergency department has been “in relatively good shape” this week, Pilon said. There is an average of 16 patients waiting for inpatient beds in the emergency department this week. Recently, there's been an average of 24 patients waiting for inpatient beds in the emergency department.
“It really does depend on the demands for services that comes through that door,” Pilon said. “Some weeks are very, very busy. Some aren't so busy.”
In his letter, Lepage, who has been an emergency physician in Sudbury since 1990, and has been heading up the department since January 2011, said the emergency department has 38 beds, but up to 33 of them are sometimes filled with patients waiting to be moved to hospital wards.
He said this isn't safe for patients, as studies have shown that patients who are admitted for prolonged periods of time in the emergency department have “more complications, higher mortalities and longer stays in the hospital.”
The chronic overcrowding in the emergency department has also led to the departure of “many good physicians and nurses,” Lepage wrote. “Even on the rare days when we don not have many inpatients, we don't have the staff to process patients quickly.”
He apologized to the community for the long emergency room wait times, which are “among the worst wait times in Ontario.”
Pilon said Lepage “just wants to make sure the emerg patients are seen in a timely fashion,” and is expressing his frustration that there are so many admitted patients in the emergency department.
In a report presented at Health Sciences North's monthly board of directors meeting March 13, hospital president and CEO Dr. Denis Roy said the organization is “closely monitoring” the impact of the closure of the Memorial beds.
He said there's been a recent average of 70 ALC patients being cared for at the hospital's Ramsey Lake Health Centre site. About half of those patients are waiting for long-term care beds.
One surgery was cancelled at the hospital in February because of the unavailability of beds in the system, Roy said.
Posted by Jenny Jelen
