SASKATOON – Surges in patient volumes within the Saskatoon Health Region (SHR) have begun. Wednesday marked a predicted peak in overcapacity at all three hospitals sites and models show it’s about to get much worse.
“We’re definitely seeing that surge in our capacity right now,” said Sandra Blevins, vice president of integrated health services for SHR.
“Ideally, there would be no more than 13 people waiting in emergency at Royal University Hospital,” explained Blevins. On Wednesday morning, often the busiest time in an emergency department there were 29 patients on-site.
Influxes predicted by the use of historical data dating as far back as four years ago.
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“That predictive model is very important to us because we’ve been able to plan day by day, hour by hour really what should be the movement of our patients,” she said.
“We are in overcapacity, we’re more than what we want in our emergencies right now but what is different is that we’ve opened up and planned for additional capacity in this period of surge.”
In late December, SHR started to staff additional care areas with employees at regular time.
“Last year, we were using what we called inappropriate spaces and we don’t have that in our plan right now so it’s good. Our staff are on regular time, they know that they’re working, we know that this is the volume of patients that we’re going to manage.”
A team of physicians and operational leaders were put into place to plan and prepare for January’s peaks which up until this point haven’t increased because of influenza. Areas like orthopedics, neurology and medicine are seeing the brunt of this intensification of patients.
Blevins also noted that with anticipated upswings in patient volumes more attention is being paid to when staff are allocated time off which meant less staff saw their Christmas holiday requests fulfilled.
“Mangers are doing a very good job of using that data to really align their human resource plan.”
Daily even hourly discussions take place with other regions to see how they’re holding up and who can safely return home. Since 30 per cent of all inpatient services within the SHR are provided to patients who don’t live within the region. Blevins says health care providers are also being moved to where they’re needed the most.
“There are a group of staff that we have hired into permanent full-time and part-time positions, they’re scheduled very day and they’re scheduled to where that surge is happening.”
Approximately 12 people who had surgeries planned for early January will now have their procedure postponed until later this month or even next month.
It’s a two per cent adjustment to planned surgical volumes that will now free up seven inpatient surgical beds to now be used for emergencies and for other demands during peak times.
While spikes in patient loads aren’t anything new in health care, what is this year is the region’s ‘crystal ball’. A predictive model, 96 per cent accurate that is projecting by next Wednesday there will be 120 patients more than there are beds.
“The worst case is we’re going to hit flu and we’re going to be exceeding our predicted model but I think at this point we’re really seeing that predicted model is giving us a lot of knowledge on how to best manage what we need to.”
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