While the province this week announced hospitals must stop performing elective surgeries due to high COVID-19 case numbers, Midland’s hospital was already ahead of the curve.
Dr. Vikram Ralhan, chief of staff at Georgian Bay General Hospital, said the hospital started “ramping down” non-urgent and elective surgeries and procedures on April 12.
“Our Surgical Oversight Committee has continued to meet to formalize plans for additional service reductions with the formal directive from the province issued this week,” Ralhan said.
“As hospitals in Ontario are expected to reserve critical-care capacity for patients from the GTA, GBGH has been assisting wherever we can. Our leaders meet daily with other regional hospital partners to ensure we are working collaboratively to re-balance the overwhelming critical care load on the health system.”
Earlier this week, Ontario's chief medical officer of health Dr. David Williams ordered hospitals across the province to cancel all non-urgent and non-emergency surgeries in order to clear space for a potential influx of COVID-19 patients.
That decision came after a steady rise in case counts, including Ontario reporting 4,505 new COVID-19 cases on Friday with more than 800 patients now in intensive care units across the province.
As of late Thursday, GBGH has already taken in 13 patients from outside its regular catchment area and anticipates that trend will continue in the coming weeks.
“To accommodate these patients, we are expanding our current eight-bed intensive care unit (ICU), which is already reaching full capacity with COVID and non-COVID patients,” Ralhan noted.
“Additional beds also require additional staff and physicians to care for these patients so that is another challenge we are currently addressing.”
As for patient demographics, Ralhan noted the hospital is now seeing younger COVID-positive patients being admitted to hospital than in previous waves of the pandemic.
“In addition to accepting patients from out of our area, we’re also seeing an increase in non-COVID local patients requiring admission to the hospital,” he added.
“Patients are presenting to our emergency department more ill, requiring admission and critical care in our hospital which is pushing GBGH to full capacity.
“The demand for critical care is not just an issue coming to our area from the GTA. It is happening locally as well.”
