Thunder Bay hospital returns to chronic gridlock

Superior Morning4:04Gridlock - Again

Almost thirty days and counting. That's the latest length of time the regional health sciences centre has been gridlock. We'll get an update from the hospital's Dr. Mark Henderson, executive vice-president of patient servicesThunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre has returned to its chronic state of too many patients and not enough beds.

The hospital caught a break over the Christmas and New Year period with reduced pressure in the emergency room, but executive vice-president Dr. Mark Henderson said since then there have been more patients than available beds for about 28 straight days.

That's forced the postponement of half a dozen elective surgeries. But he says that's a relatively small figure given the number of surgeries performed daily.

“If you think of the numbers — 50-60 surgeries every day and we've been doing that since Jan. 2 — we've only had to cancel six patients,” Henderson said.

"These are elective operations that can be postponed. We appreciate it's a great inconvenience for the patient, but these are not life-threatening surgeries."

Henderson noted it’s “amazing that we're carrying on as well as we do. We've been very, very congested. But, despite that, thanks to the good efforts of everybody, we've been managing pretty well.”

The gridlock is caused by a backlog of alternate level of care patients — people requiring long-term care elsewhere in the community. But there are no beds available for them in the community, so they remain in hospital.

As of Thursday morning there were 59 ALC patients in hospital beds, which is an improvement since last year, Henderson noted.

The province gave additional funding last year to open up 20 ALC beds in Thunder Bay.

Henderson said the hospital has 375 funded beds. On top of that, other spaces in the hospital can be used for additional patient beds on a temporary basis — spaces like post-op care wards — but the hospital gets no remuneration for them.