Hospital services getting back to normal as third wave subsides
Surgeries, outpatient clinics, diagnostic imaging among services cut in late April
After two months of reduced services due to the third wave of the pandemic, hospitals across Nova Scotia are returning to some semblance of normalcy.
"We feel like we're in a better position, trying to be a bit cautious and weighing out the epidemiology and how we can reintroduce services, but we feel quite confident that we're in a good place this week to resume those services back to pre-third wave levels," Brett MacDougall, executive direct of operations for the provincial health authority's eastern zone, told CBC's Information Morning Cape Breton.
Hospitals began reducing services across Nova Scotia in late April. That included surgeries, outpatient clinics, rehabilitation services, diagnostic imaging and laboratory services. The changes were intended to help free up beds and other resources to care for critically ill patients and support testing efforts.
Some hospitals performed mostly elective surgeries that would not require hospital stays but continued to deliver urgent care and time-sensitive cancer services.
As of last week, surgeries at the QEII Health Sciences Centre in Halifax remained at 80 per cent capacity. At the Cape Breton Regional Hospital, surgical admissions are back up to their normal capacity — between eight and 12 planned surgeries per day. The Northside Hospital in North Sydney is now allowing surgeries again.
"Additionally, we've also reintroduced our full lab collections capacity so people can now again gain access to routine blood collections as well as other types of testing that we may have paused while we were trying to manage the COVID testing," said MacDougall.
Surgery numbers
According to the provincial health authority, in-person supports for mental health and addictions are starting to increase but those receiving care virtually can continue doing so if that's what they prefer.
Despite having more COVID-19 cases in the third wave than the first wave, services were not as affected by restrictions as they were in 2020.
More than 29,600 surgeries were completed between Jan. 1 and May 26. During that same timeframe in 2020, around 20,100 surgeries were performed.
Diagnostics also took less of a hit. In 2020, diagnostic imaging services were reduced to as low as 24 per cent, while during the third wave volumes went down to 80 per cent briefly, but hovered close to 100 per cent.
At the peak of the third wave, more than 100 COVID-19 patients were admitted to hospital and around 25 of them ended up in intensive care.