Options for treatment
Glace Bay emergency department expansion identified in 2014 report
A 30 per cent expansion for the Glace Bay Hospital emergency department as was announced in June was proposed in a 2014 report prepared for the Cape Breton Regional Health Authority.
The Cape Breton Post obtained under Freedom of Information copies of several master plans and summary reports dating back to 2013-2014 for multiple sites prepared for the then Cape Breton District Health Authority.
The May 6, 2014 final draft of the master program/master plan for the Glace Bay Hospital’s emergency department prepared
. . . by James Torbert & Associates notes that its ER has deficiencies that make providing services a challenge.
The report looked at what a renovated and expanded emergency department at the Glace Bay Hospital should look like — from the number of exam rooms required to the cost and staffing that would be required.
“The space issues impacting effectiveness and efficiency in the ED relate to work flow, insufficient treatment space, inappropriate waiting space and congestion resulting in inefficient throughput of patients and a general lack of privacy confidentiality,” the report states.
It goes on to say that the emergency department needed to be expanded to include renovated and new space, noting that the existing area is 5,715 net square feet, while the proposed area — a 30 per cent increase in total area — would be 8,130 net square feet. The report estimated the project cost for the work would be $6.2 million, not including tax.
The breakdown of probable project cost identified the cost of the renovation as proposed in 2014 as $3 million, with the new addition costing $3.2 million.
The plan announced by the Stephen McNeil Liberal government and the Nova Scotia Health Authority in June also referenced a renovation of Glace Bay’s emergency department, with space increased by an estimated 30 per cent. No estimated costs have been released.
The announcement also included an expansion by 40 per cent of the emergency department at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital and a doubling in size of the cancer centre. The New Waterford Consolidated and Northside General hospitals are to close under the plan, replaced by community health centres and new long-term care facilities, resulting in the loss of
the communities’ emergency departments.
The 2014 James Torbert & Associates report notes that there were many instances in the previous three years when the Glace Bay emergency department was closed due to the unavailability of doctors and scheduled and unscheduled ER closures have remained an issue at area hospitals in the years since.
The plan, however, assumed that the emergency department would be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week in the future.
Projected requirements called for the emergency department
at Glace Bay to have eight examination rooms and two trauma rooms, where there were currently three exam rooms, a fracture room, an isolation room and a trauma room.
It also called for nine observation beds — it noted the current observation room could accommodate five patients — for a total of 19 patient spaces. The report noted that would allow the department to accommodate the peak period observed of 28 patients.
The staffing required to run such a department would have to increase from 17.8 full-time
equivalent positions to 22.6, including an increase in the number of registered nurses from 13 to 15.1
Among the deficiencies identified
with the existing space were the lack of covering for the ambulance entrance, exposing patients and staff to weather; no appropriate isolation space; no area to decontaminate patients exposed to chemical or other agents before entering the ER; no storage and limited space for extra stretchers; the current location of the triage room prevented the department from meeting provincial standards; and lack of confidentiality for patients at registration.
The hospital opened in 1986.