The Ottawa Hospital has completed construction of a 40-bed temporary unit in the parking lot of its Civic Campus, which it hopes will improve patient offload times and get paramedics back into the field sooner.
The local hospital announced back in October that it was setting out to construct a temporary structure to boost capacity amid the high occupancy rates that marked the second wave of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
The Ottawa Hospital announced Wednesday the new unit is now open for patient care.
Constructed in the east parking lot of the hospital’s Carling Avenue campus, the new site is intended to help increase overall capacity and improve patient flow, reducing ER wait times and helping paramedics get back into the field.
Ottawa Public Health’s coronavirus dashboard shows 19 people are currently in the hospital with COVID-19, nine of whom are in the intensive care unit.
Some 95 per cent of acute care beds in Ottawa hospitals are currently occupied, according to the OPH dashboard, with 82 per cent of beds filled in the city’s intensive care units.
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