The CEO of NL Health Services says a shortage of acute care beds is at the root of patient offloading delays that are holding up paramedics and ambulances, but the situation is improving.
The capital city’s emergency rooms logged just over 2,000 hours of delays in October, but Dr. Pat Parfrey says that’s an improvement from the previous year.
He told VOCM Open Line with Paddy Daly that they have added eight more acute care beds at the Health Sciences in the last two months.
He admits that staffing becomes a problem when you add more beds, but they’re adding another four beds soon, with another seven later. He says they’ve also freed up a number of beds in long-term care for patients who can go home. Also an issue according to Parfrey was discharge facilitation, which is the flow of patients through the hospital. “We’ve actually hired people who can facilitate discharge more rapidly and that’s been effective as well.”)
He says they could be inundated with flu cases in the province’s ERs in February, and they’re making plans to offset any increased demands and delays in that eventuality.
