SHR pledges to close ‘hallway’ beds
Used when hospitals over capacity
Saskatoon Health Region officials are committed to ending hallway medicine next month.
Seven of the 20 inadequate patient beds — termed “inappropriate spaces” — used in city hospitals are now permanently closed, and the rest should be retired by June 5, health region vicepresident Nilesh Kavia told reporters Thursday morning.
“That’s a commitment we are making, that’s a commitment our CEO (Dan Florizone) has made. We are committed to not having hallway medicine,” Kavia said.
The beds aren’t necessarily patient beds in hallways, but are sometimes a third bed squeezed into a room made for two. The health region considers the beds medically safe, but they can be loud spaces lacking privacy.
“Inappropriate beds don’t have all the functionalities that a proper bed should have. Many of them don’t have privacy curtains, many of them don’t have call bells,” Kavia said.
Royal University Hospital has 16 of these beds; St. Paul’s Hospital has two and City Hospital and the Dube Mental Health Centre each have one. They are often used when hospitals are over capacity.
Health region staff are changing policies and procedures to meet peak demand periods when the 20 beds close. Staff are using predictive models to better anticipate increases in admissions, Kavia said.
Officials are also looking at how to better manage patient flow, such as moving more patients into community and transitional beds such as home care while waiting for assessments, said Corey Miller, vice-president of integrated health services.
“A hospital bed has access to nursing, but so could a transitional bed,” Miller told reporters. “But it would also have access to recreational therapy, which is traditionally something we don’t do well in a hospital setting.”
The health region wants to start investing more in home care rather than acute care nursing to improve patient flow, said health region vice-president Sandra Blevins. Hiring is now underway, she added.
“A bed may have been taken by someone better served in an alternate care facility or a home-care setting,” Blevins told reporters.
“That bed may also have been needed because we weren’t able to deliver a test at the right time, so if we align that resource then you’re shrinking the need for our in-patient beds, transitioning to where care is more appropriate and the resource is used most efficiently.”
The reallocation of resources can be done without sacrificing quality of care, she added.
“When you are able to take patients out a little bit earlier and with the right care setting, you’re never going to push someone out into a setting that’s not appropriate,” she said. “If we increase our home-care provisions and our nursing, we can get people home safely.”
The move to more transitional and community beds could help save money, Kavia said.
“When we provide the right care for a patient in the right setting, ultimately it’s better value for the taxpayer as well.”