HALIFAX – Discussions have started between the Department of Health and Wellness, Capital Health and Emergency Health Services (EHS) on how to solve the problem of emergency rooms being over capacity.
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On Monday, staff from the Department of Health and Wellness met with Barbara Hall, acting CEO of Capital Health, and Jeff Fraser, provincial operations director for EHS. Minister Leo Glavine and Deputy Minister Peter Vaughan were not present for the meeting.
“We were there this morning with a mandate to work together to develop some solutions,” Fraser said.
“The reality is it is more important than ever for us to sit down and map what’s best for patients and to do that together collaboratively is very important.”
Fraser said he is working to build some programming around the discussions held on Monday but declined to go into any specifics.
“We had a good discussion this morning on what has happened, what is happening and what needs to happen within the system. We left the meeting with a little bit of work we needed to do. We’ll look at all the available information so we can make a really good patient-centered decision,” he said.
Hall said it is important to understand the issue is not simply emergency room overcrowding but rather a system capacity issue. She adds that the emergency room is similar to “a canary in a coal mine”.
“It would be the first sign a system is getting into trouble. You would start to see ambulances backed up and overloaded. It doesn’t mean the emergency room is inefficient and they’re not doing their job. It means somehow the whole system is blocked up,” she said.
“The inn is full and we’re running out of solutions.”
“We’re all sitting at the table trying to figure out are there some innovative things we can do to create capacity,” she said.
Hall said about seven new beds were created by turning private rooms into semi-private rooms, but she adds that a dozen more beds are still needed to help ease the pressure.
“We’re going to keep them open until this particular pressure is over but clearly that is going to be one of our strategies for the future is to perhaps open them quicker,” she said.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Wellness was not available to comment but the department did release a statement.
“This was an operational meeting between system staff. The discussion focused on identifying the factors that lead to system overcapacity and the actions we need to take now and over the longer term,” it reads.
The statement also lists a number of key areas the department plans to focus on:
- Reviewing and revising procedures to keep patients moving through the system
- Making sure patients get in to the right bed quickly
- Ensuring hospital beds are used effectively
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