Crowded Regina hospitals cancel procedures

REGINA — Overcrowding at Regina’s two hospitals is causing the Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region (RQHR) to cancel some non-surgical elective procedures.

No surgeries have been cancelled, but 66 endoscopy procedures have been. Patients affected have been notified.

“This is not a completely unusual situation for RQHR,” said Michael Redenbach, chief operating officer of health services for the health region.

For the majority of November, the Pasqua Hospital and the General Hospital were overcapacity.

Redenbach said admission numbers started to peak this past weekend. Normally, more discharges occur on a weekend.

At one point on Monday, the Regina General Hospital had 91 patients in the emergency department. Twenty-four of those patients were waiting in the emergency department for an in-patient bed.

At the Pasqua Hospital, 59 patients were in the emergency department and 16 of those patients were waiting for an in-patient bed.

“Our sincere hope is that we’ll be back to normal within a few days,” said Redenbach.

Redenbach said it’s difficult to find one reason why overcrowding occurs, but said better primary care for people would mean fewer trips to the emergency room.

“We can benefit from more family physicians in Regina, and throughout rural Saskatchewan for that matter,” he said.

To reduce capacity, the RQHR uses targeted days of discharge to monitor patients as they progress through care and works with other health regions to ensure patients can be efficiently transported to their home hospitals.

Redenbach added Regina’s hospitals are still serving people that don’t necessarily need hospital care.

“Even in our regular course of business, we are operating right at full capacity, so it doesn’t take very much of a surge to put us over the top like this,” he said.

According to a recent study by the Canadian Institute for Health Information, Canadians, compared to other countries, use emergency departments at a higher rate than most, often because it is difficult to make short-notice appointments with a family doctor. Less than half of Canadians can see their family doctor on the same or next day.

Redenbach isn’t sure how long the “extreme overcapacity situation” will last, but for the time being, in-patient beds will be located in hallways and overflow units at the Pasqua and General hospitals.

“We fully acknowledge that is not the ideal way (of) caring for people,” he said.