Doctors recruited to help staff busy Windsor ERs
Windsor Regional Hospital has brought in doctors from across the province to help in the emergency department during the busiest winter in the facility’s history. December, January and February set a record for most admissions ever at the hospital. In early 2018 alone, Windsor Regional admitted 285 more patients than the same time last year. A total of 2,885 patients were admitted in January and February.
The acute patient days at the hospital spiked at 14,840 in January, compared to 12,135 in August, for a 22 per cent increase.
A harsh flu season and a cold, snowy winter led to a number of health issues, including slips and falls. Windsor Regional Hospital typically operated at between 100
and 103 per cent capacity through the winter, changing private rooms to semi-private to accommodate the overflow.
“It’s been difficult,” Windsor Regional Hospital CEO David Musyj said. “But we were prepared for this year because we had advance notice that influenza was going to be bad because of Australia’s experience, so we were ready for it. “Overall, the team has done an amazing job.”
One area in particular that saw increased traffic was the emergency department, where a full recruitment drive has been underway for a year.
“Flu season this year was probably 50 per cent worse than a typical flu season due to varieties in the flu,” Dr. Donald Levy, Windsor Regional’s head of emergency medicine, said Monday. “The last four months were probably our most challenging months, but we expect it be resolved soon.”
The emergency department, which covers both the Metropolitan and Ouellette campuses, has 40 doctors on staff. A full emergencymedicine department at Windsor Regional is 45 doctors. Besides the trying winter, Windsor Regional has struggled with losing doctors, mostly from emergency medicine, because the Canadian dollar has tumbled. When the currencies were at par, several American physicians joined the local emergency team, though they have since returned home. “When we had parity with the U.S. dollar, both emergency departments were fully staffed all the time,” Levy said. “So what we have had to do since, to get our numbers back, is we had to recruit. We have conducted a large recruitment effort in the last year.” Lately, some doctors have been coming to pitch in temporarily from throughout the province. One doctor originally from Ontario came back from the United States to help out in the emergency department while another has split his time between Windsor and Nova Scotia. Meanwhile, doctors from across the country have come in to test the waters in Windsor as part of the ongoing recruitment drive. “The good news is that we have already confirmed four new emergency department physicians will join us in July,” Levy said. “We have been working on a long-term plan the past year.”
Levy said he expects the emergency department’s waiting times to improve by September, when the full complement of doctors will join in and when new initiatives, such as the patient flow improvement program, will help manage the workload.
Levy said while the average time to see a physician in Ontario is 1.5 hours, it’s about 1.9 hours at the Ouellette campus and from 1.9 to 2.7 at the Met campus.
“We have exciting new things coming and we expect our wait times to be better at both sites in the fall,” Levy said. Meanwhile, 30 surgeries were postponed at the hospital in January and February, compared to 29 in the same months last year. Musyj said Windsor Regional Hospital handled the surge well. “Are there issues coming across on a daily basis? For sure,” Musyj said. “But our experience this The Windsor Regional Hospital emergency department operates on an annual budget of $36.1 million. About 60,000 patients pass through the emergency department each year at the Met campus, while some 55,000 are processed at the Ouellette campus.
Source: Windsor Regional Hospital
year as compared to other years, even though our volumes are at historical levels, is far better.”