An unprecedented surge in patient volume at Kingston Health Sciences Centre has pushed the hospital far beyond its capacity, forcing administrators to place patients in hallways, classrooms and storage rooms.
The human toll of that crisis is already being felt by families navigating the overloaded system.
Amanda Olner took to Facebook on March 3 to detail the “overwhelming overcrowding crisis” she says her family experienced after her father was admitted to Kingston General Hospital for heart failure.
“Not once, but twice, my father has been placed in a hallway due to lack of available rooms,” Olner wrote.
Olner noted that after undergoing a cardiac stress test, her father finally received a room for one night, only to be transferred back to a hallway immediately after.
“Being moved into a hallway setting does not allow patients the quiet, privacy, or stability required for healing,” she stated, adding her family was even billed through insurance for room coverage they never received.
This personal account mirrors the grim reality outlined by the hospital this week. KHSC revealed it surpassed 630 admitted inpatients last week — the highest number ever recorded at the facility. That number far exceeds the 570 beds the hospital currently has the footprint to operate.
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KHSC President and CEO Dr. David Pichora says the hospital is simply out of room.
“It’s many months ago now that we turned the gym into a regular patient ward,” Pichora said. “Many of the sun rooms in the hospital are patient rooms now, classrooms are patient rooms. In selected cases, storage rooms are now patient rooms, and as the numbers go up, we’re having to care for people in hallways, which we really don’t like.”
To cope with the immediate future, Pichora added that administrators are “actively looking into options to decant to create some more bed spaces, likely in offices.”
The hospital is asking the public to consider alternatives such as primary care providers, walk-in clinics or virtual appointments for less urgent medical concerns to help ease pressure on the emergency department.
According to Pichora, the crisis is not driven by COVID-19 or the flu, but by long-term systemic pressures, including an aging population, regional growth and increased medical complexity. Advancements in medical treatments have also enabled the hospital to save and treat patients who would not have survived in previous years, further increasing the need for bed space.
Local politicians are pointing to the crisis as proof that the provincial government needs to provide immediate relief. Kingston and the Islands MPP Ted Hsu recently toured Kingston General Hospital and witnessed the makeshift wards firsthand.
Hsu noted that he saw a bed in a hallway, complete with a room number label and privacy screens, indicating the problem is becoming entrenched.
“It’s a temporary space in their system … but that’s an example of sort of semi-permanent hallway medicine,” Hsu said, noting there are many similar setups throughout the hospital.
Hsu is calling on Premier Doug Ford and his cabinet to immediately approve funding requests currently on their desks, which include money for urgent fire safety upgrades at the aging facility. He is also urging the province to speed up the rollout of primary health-care teams to ensure more residents have access to family doctors, which would reduce the burden on hospitals.
Despite the severe strain, Pichora praised the hospital staff for stepping up and noted that KHSC has had recent success in recruiting, meaning staffing levels are currently better than they were during the pandemic.
“I’m amazed at the positive feedback I get from people who say, ‘Yeah, I wasn’t in a regular room, I was in a hallway, or I was in a sunroom — it wasn’t the best, but boy, they really looked after me well,'” Pichora said.
Remember it is all free not like our nasty maga neighbours.
Should send them ALL to Trudeau’s new 4.6 million dollar home since HE CREATED this problem in every province with all the NEW immigrants he welcomed to canada, record new immigrants to boot all these years. Lots of health care systems are now suffering, we canadians are all suffering because of what Trudeau did to us all.
How many of the 630 patients in Kingston hospital are chronically sick refugees?
You can thank Carney for this mess. Instead of giving billions to 3rd world countries he should be giving these taxpayers $$ to the provinces to improve health care. He is running our country into the ground.
This is what happens when too many people move to an area in too short of a time.
Les it must be nice to blame all the worlds problems on the Liberal government. I love people like you, every village needs an idiot, you’re ours.
Provincial gov’ts are not the ones that brought in millions of unvetted people with no plan on how to house, educate, or provide healthcare to.