Lack of beds cancels 14 surgeries at Fredericton hospital in January

A lack of beds is causing more surgeries to be cancelled at Fredericton's Dr. Everett Chalmers Hospital as "alternate care" patients continue to take up room, according to the hospital's chief surgeon.

"In January 2017, we cancelled 14 surgeries because of lack of beds and as of yesterday, there were still 57 alternative level of care patients admitted at the Chalmers hospital. So nearly a quarter of our beds," said Hoyt.  

"Those aren't exactly the same numbers as the last time I was here, but they're pretty close."

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While Hoyt said he didn't have a lot of expectations the situation would change he hoped it would. As it turns out that hope was unfounded.

"I had hope that there would be a groundswell of movement and support toward some type of long-term strategy to fix this problem and there have been recommendations made, there's been a lot of talk certainly in the short term after that interview," said Hoyt.

"But we're not seeing results on the ground floor."

Hospital's hands tied

Hoyt said the hospital's hands are tied.

The hospital can't just release alternate care patients with nowhere to go, and senior care doesn't fall under Horizon's umbrella.

To me, that's the big red flag, and that flag's been waving for years now.- Dr. Ben Hoyt

That is causing difficulties for the hospital, which is already at 100 per cent capacity.

"When your hospital is always running at a 100 per cent capacity or more, there's no buffer, there's no capacity to handle crises," said Hoyt. 

"A flu epidemic is essentially a crisis when it comes to the hospital system because we're already at 100 per cent before the flu outbreak. Or an ice storm is a crisis because people start falling and breaking bones and needing to come into the hospital for it and we don't have the extra capacity to absorb that kind of thing."

It's not just the Chalmers hospital that's having issues with surgeries.

The Moncton Hospital has the longest wait times for knee and hip replacements in the province. Nine times out of 10 the wait times for hip replacement is 588 days, while the wait for knee replacements is 726 days.

Emergency situations also caused the Moncton Hospital to cancel surgeries. The hospital had to cancel 25 surgeries, in part because of late January's ice storm.

Successive governments to blame?

Hoyt lays much of the blame at the feet of successive governments for not following recommendations made by multiple commissions.

In particular, the latest report released by the Council on Aging.

"As we've seen with our provincial government far too often they recognize a problem, they commission a report or study, they get a report and then they don't do anything with it," said Hoyt. 

"[Then] they shelve it, and they sit on it. Then four years later there's a new government who didn't like how that process was done and decides to do their own report and start over again."

The CBC sought reaction from the Department of Health to Hoyt's comments but hasn't heard back.

Hurting patients

The situation has started to affect Hoyt's patients as well.

"I had a patient booked for neck surgery, drove down from Saint-Léonard, got to the hospital, noontime rolls around, he was booked in the afternoon, no beds, had to send him home," he said.

"I just can't imagine how frustrating that would be for that patient to plan their life around that surgery, take some time off work, travel two and a half hours to get down here, only to have to turn around and go home. It's not right."

Hoyt said he thinks the system has already reached a critical moment and it won't take much more for the bubble to burst.

"To me, that's the big red flag, and that flag's been waving for years now," said Hoyt.