Sudbury's Health Sciences North (HSN) — the largest hospital in Northern Ontario — has admitted two COVID-19 patients who were transferred from Southern Ontario hospitals, where there is a struggle to cope with an increasing number of critically ill pandemic patients being hospitalized and needing intensive care.
The hospital reported on Thursday afternoon there were currently 21 COVID-19 admitted patients, including eight in the ICU. An additional six other hospital patients are under investigation for COVID-19 and awaiting results.
"HSN anticipates more transfers in the coming days, although no specific number has been communicated yet to HSN by the Ontario Critical Care Command Centre," said a statement from the hospital.
Hospital president and CEO Dominic Giroux spoke to the issue Monday when it was first revealed that the situation in Southern Ontario was becoming more serious.
"We are in a tough spot provincially with active cases, hospitalizations and ICU admissions. The situation is serious and we know these trends will continue this way for the short term, which is why most hospitals have ramped down activities to redeploy staff to repurpose acute beds into critical care beds," said Dominic Giroux, the president and CEO of HSN.
As part of a provincewide strategy, hospitals have been told to ramp down clinical services and elective surgeries in order to allow doctors and nurses with critical care experience to be redeployed to intensive care assignments.
"We are stepping up to the plate to do all that we can to help by extending our critical care capacity and being ready to accept ICU patients from hot spot regions when necessary," said Giroux on Monday. He outlined the local ICU numbers as being nearly three-quarters of regular capacity.
The hospital also reported Thursday it has adjusted its bed spaces to the point where beds are being reassigned in anticipation of a surge of COVID-19 patients.
"Thanks to proactive steps taken by HSN in the past few months to staff 40 additional beds at Daffodil Lodge, HSN is currently at an 87-per-cent occupancy level, with 61 Alternative Level of Care (ALC) patients and three patients admitted through the Emergency Department waiting for a bed. These are historically low levels," said the hospital in a news release.
The hospital also said that some non-urgent hospital patients from Sudbury might be transferred out to other hospitals across Northern Ontario.
"This is in part due to collaborative efforts for safe discharge of patients to other facilities or homes including long-term care, complex continuing care, retirement homes and home care with support. HSN has also notified admitted patients that if necessary they may need to be relocated to another hospital in the region. There are also 692 available beds across Northern Ontario hospitals. Intensive Care Units in Northern Ontario currently have 73 patients out of a baseline bed capacity of 144 beds."
In the meantime, HSN said the situation could evolve quickly and it might have to accept more and more COVID-19 patients from the south.
"HSN’s Incident Command team, which includes medical staff as well as a Patient and Family Advisor, will continue to monitor the situation provincially, regionally and locally and will take steps to repurpose acute care beds into critical care beds through staff redeployment. Decisions about any additional postponement of non-emergent and non-urgent surgeries and procedures at HSN will be made following fair and transparent processes by its Incident Command team," said the HSN statement.
