Today marks day one of a new policy at Chatham-Kent Health Alliance when it comes to surgeries.
The province has asked hospitals to ramp down non-urgent and elective surgeries for the time being while the COVID-19 cases soar and beds in ICUs across Ontario fill up.
Lori Marshall, the President and CEO says the request is to help free up ICU space for all that need it. But there will still be some surgeries.
“We plan to proceed with surgery on Monday, but we are evaluating this on a daily basis based on not only our occupancy maintaining that at 85%, but also based on the relative need and requests that may come to us from the region or across the province.”
Marshall says they might also need to move staff around to other departments and possibly to other hospitals.
“We will respond as required to Ontario Health,” Marshall explains. “The key is that we must maintain sufficient resources to make sure that we can continue to provide urgent and emergent surgery. There’s certainly no intent to ever stop those services.”
The local hospital will continue to provide urgent and emergent service and limited ambulatory services for the time being. If and when cancellation of surgical procedures is required, patients will be notified by their surgeon.