Local health officials are keeping close tabs on the rising number of COVID-19 cases across the province.
Chatham-Kent Health Alliance CEO Lori Marshall says the hospital is at about 70% occupancy right now, which allows some wiggle room should patients need to be brought in from elsewhere to receive care.
“If there are pressures that are happening elsewhere across the province, (hospitals) have all been notified that we might anticipate that there could be some movement of patients across the province in order to support everyone who needs the level of care they need.”
Another issue some residents may be concerned about is the risk of cancelled or postponed elective procedures, as was the case during the pandemic’s first wave.
The hospital did trim down the number of elective surgeries to about three a day in mid-October to prepare for the launch of a new regional health care information system. However, Marshall says they don’t plan to scale back again.
“There were a lot of people who weren’t able to have surgery (during the first wave) and that was quite detrimental,” Marshall explains. “What we’re very much trying to do across hte province now is making sure we’re continuing with our surgical volumes, keeping all of the precautions in place that need to be there, but that we’re continuing with that work while we sit in this position.”
Meantime, new beds funded by the province earlier this month to help with a surge in patients during this year’s flu season are already being put to good use.
“We’ve got 10 additional beds open right now and anticipate the other 10 will be open either this week or in the very near future. That additional capacity also helps us to be able to not only respond to COVID-19 patients, it also makes sure we can keep going with addressing that surgical backlog.”
The funding for the 20 additional beds, which essentially covers the staff needed to care for patients in those beds, came to just over $1.8 million
To compare to pre-pandemic times, CKHA received $302,500 to add five additional beds for the 2019 flu season.
