Health Alliance CEO Lori Marshall says the Chatham campus made use of over a dozen extra beds over the last few weeks to deal with a spike in flu patients, made possible by a $300,000 surge funding grant from the province.
“We didn’t open beds when we didn’t need to. Which meant that during this particular surge we were able to not only have those five beds open, we were able to open an additional nine beds,” says Marshall. “So we actually had 14 beds extra open at that time, so that’s how we used that funding, we were actually able to close the nine but we continue to have the five extra beds operational.”
Marshall says she believes the current flu season has now peaked, but there could always be a second surge before spring arrives.