During a board of directors meeting, Quinte Health laid out the challenges currently facing the region’s health care providers.
With the onset of flu season and the increase in cases of RSV and COVID, hospital resources are being stretched thin.
Stacey Daub, CEO of Quinte Health, says that despite the season’s challenges local hospitals are able to handle the larger volume of patients and work with neighbouring regions as needed.
“The team has done a really great job both in terms of the front door, making sure that we have the emergency department inpatient unit being up and ready to support the larger volume, as well as thinking about regionally supporting Kingston,” said Daub.
Pediatric beds in particular are in high demand with area hospitals operating at over 130% capacity.
Children’s visits to the hospital are up 20% over last October, and children specifically between four and ten years old are up 40%.
Despite being over normal capacity, it was noted that the hospitals had prepared for this, and had the capacity to treat up to 150% percent of their normal capacity if needed.
Daub also remarked that while during previous seasons they could predict the spread of respiratory illness, that is much harder to do this season with multiple dangerous infections in the community.
“And what we found increasingly as we have multiple viruses circulating for the first time, really, in our history, that they cannot kind of forecast with the level of certainty that they’ve had in the past,” Daud said.
Staff shortages were one of the challenges brought up at the meeting, and how Quinte Health plans to address them.
In a report to the board of directors, Christian Sauvageau, chair of the QPC Committee said that they had managed to increase the number of clinical staff they had compared to the start of the year, with a net increase of 85 staff. In his report, Sauvageau said they will continue to work on recruitment and retention to keep staffing levels up.
Despite staffing challenges, surgical backlog is down compared to the provincial average. As of October, patients locally waiting longer than targets for surgery was 15%, compared to the provincial rate of 52%. Backlogs for other procedures have also been reduced, with the queue for patients to get mammograms down 90%.
