City’s code zeros nothing new, but getting worse
Mayor goes viral on Twitter after seeing backup of ambulances waiting at General ER Monday
HAMILTON’S MAYOR is sounding alarm bells about delays in offloading patients at a time when the city is experiencing its worst ambulance shortage in five years.
The number of “code zero” events so far in January is 31.
That’s the highest number of times in one month that one or no ambulances have been available to respond to an emergency call in the past five years, according to the city.
“Something must change and it must change immediately,” warned Mario Posteraro, president of Ontario Public Service Employees Union Local 256, which represents Hamilton’s paramedics.
While taking a friend to Hamilton General Hospital Monday night, Mayor Fred Eisenberger said he was “shocked” to see eight ambulances waiting for patients to be admitted.
He said he tweeted to illustrate the situation in Hamilton isn’t getting any better.
“We’ve been struggling for years to deal with this issue,” he said.
Posteraro assured there’s “nothing special” about what the mayor saw Monday night, pointing to a 4 to 5 per cent increase in calls for service annually, resulting in a 35 per cent increase over the past seven years.
The city said calls for service increased another 5 per cent this month.
“It shouldn’t be a surprise,” said Posteraro. “We’ve been providing this information to him and to city council for years.
“If all it takes is for the mayor and councillors to go into the emergency department then do it.”
Hamilton experienced 119 code zero events in 2017, which is down from the record-breaking 243 in 2013, but still way up from 44 in 2015.
Code zero events are often linked to offload delays — when ambulances are stuck at hospitals while paramedics wait, sometimes hours, for emergency department staff to take over care of a patient. The problem is largely blamed on overcrowded hospitals and a corresponding shortage of beds.
But Posteraro said code zeros are also related to increasing demands for service.
Local hospitals are seeing more and sicker patients in ER departments.
At St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton there has been a 29 per cent increase in emergency department visits over the past 10 years, but no particular “spike” this month, said Donna Johnson, clinical director for emergency and general internal medicine.
Many of the patients they are seeing are “frail” and “elderly,” with a number of complex medical issues, she added.
Dr. Alim Pardhan said the situation isn’t much different at Hamilton Health Sciences.
HHS was at nearly 117 per cent occupancy Monday and has averaged 105 per cent since October 2016.
“When our in-patient beds are full, patients who need to be admitted to the hospital from the emergency department stay in the beds in the emergency department, and then we have no available bed for us to off-load an ambulance into,” said Pardhan, the physician site lead for the Hamilton General’s emergency department.
Eisenberger said he plans to convene a meeting of local fire department, paramedic, police and health care leaders to discuss the issues and figure out where to go from here.
Once a “concrete” plan is devised, he
said it will be brought to council and the provincial government.
Eisenberger said he envisions the plan involving a “collection of things”, including funding as well as educating the public about when to access ambulance services.
“This is not a situation that we can allow to continue,” he said.
Health Minister Eric Hoskins told reporters at Queen’s Park he’s working closely with hospitals in Hamilton, which are facing “some challenges.”
Ontario NDP leader and Hamilton Centre MPP Andrea Horwath called on the province to ensure annual funding keep up with the rate of inflation and population growth amid the “growing hospital overcrowding crisis.”