Cramped hospitals take St. Peter’s patients after blaze

Rooms that were rendered unusable after a fire ripped through St. Peter’s Hospital won’t be ready for patients for at least a month — putting pressure on other area hospitals already short of beds to pick up the slack.

“There is pressure in the hospitals,” Winnie Doyle, executive vicepresident of clinical services at St. Joseph’s Healthcare, said Friday. “This crisis has come at a time when the pressure is high. But the impressive thing for me is the degree to which everybody has pitched in. It has been amazing.”

While roughly 140 patients were able to stay in parts of St. Peter’s that weren’t affected by Sunday’s blaze, 63 patients are receiving care elsewhere.

Hamilton General, Regional Rehabilitation Centre, Juravinki Hospital, St. Joseph’s Healthcare and Joseph Brant in Burlington are taking care of the displaced patients.

“Efforts are being undertaken to speed up the transfer of patients out of St. Peter’s Hospital to other care facilities, to help with the repatriation of patients currently at other hospitals,” Hamilton Health Sciences, which operates St. Peter’s, said in a statement late Friday.

The Mapleview Avenue hospital is a multipurpose care unit that provides in-patient, outpatient and community-based programs for dementia, aging, palliative care and rehabilitation. Normally, there are 220 patients there.

Sunday morning’s fire gutted a storage area. All the patients got out safely.

The Office of the Ontario Fire Marshal is investigating the cause of the fire, which is estimated to have caused several million dollars in damage.

On Friday, HHS said it’s too soon “evaluate the precise financial extent”

of the fire damages or the cost of relocating staff and patients.

St. Joseph’s Healthcare and St. Peter’s staffers have teamed up to take care of seven of the displaced patients at St. Joe’s.

“In these circumstances we all pitch in and do what we can to make it work,” Doyle said. “But because we were already in a situation where we had unfunded beds, it did add additional pressure.”

She said it’s unclear who will pay for the beds.

“We’ll work with Hamilton Health Sciences to make sure all of those details are looked after.”

Joseph Brant in Burlington is caring for 18 of the St. Peter’s patients. St. Peter’s has provided most of the staff to handle them while one JoBrant staffer is helping familiarize the workers with the hospital.

The influx has left Joseph Brant “a little bit tight,” said Melanie Potvin, the Burlington hospital’s director of medicine services.

“Although it is constraining, we want to make sure we are good partners within the health-care system, but also so that our patients will still have access to care in Hamilton should they require it.”

The Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant Local Health Integration Network has worked to get as many hospital patients as possible discharged from St. Joseph’s to free up space for the St. Peter’s patients.

Five patients ready to be discharged have gone to long-termcare homes in the past week, as well as others to home care or other types of care. Doyle said the LHIN has been “amazing” in how it has “stepped up.”

Hamilton Health Sciences said Friday “many” of the 96 patients who were immediately relocated from St. Peter’s after the fire have either been discharged, or transferred to other types of care, such as hospice or long-term care.

HHS said cleanup of the affected areas is underway, but noted it will take “at least a month” to finish work on patient rooms.

Some parts of the hospital have been reopened while others, such as the cafeteria and kitchen, are expected to be operational again soon.

Families of patients can call 905777-3837 for information about the patient relocation and status. Normal visiting hours are in effect.