Beginning this week, the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance will be increasing its number surgeries to 70 per cent of the volume the hospital was completing in 2019, prior to the pandemic.
“We are continuing to focus, initially, on day surgical procedures that don’t have a bed requirement with them. Although, we are starting to add in more admitted elective cases into the hospital,” said CKHA President and CEO Lori Marshall.
With a decline in COVID-19 admissions in hospitals across the province, the Ontario government announced last week that it would move into the next stage of its reopening plan on February 17.
“We are certainly following a very cautious and gradual return to surgeries, recognizing that we continue to have a number of individuals still admitted to hospital,” said Marshall.
Non-emergent surgeries in Ontario were paused by the provincial government back on January 5, due to increasing COVID-19 cases driven by the Omicron variant and increased hospitalizations.
Marshall said the majority of CKHA staff who were redeployed to other departments to assist with the increase in COVID patients, returned to their home departments last week.
Some procedures, including diagnostic imaging, cancer screening, and non-urgent and emergent pediatric surgeries, were resumed back on February 1. As well, the restrictions on non-urgent and non-emergent surgeries and procedures were lifted on February 10.