St. Joe’s Hamilton temporarily reduces hours at east end urgent care clinic due to COVID-19 surge

Another one of Hamilton’s urgent care clinics is set to begin a redeployment of staff amid the recent COVID-19 surge.

St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton (SJHH) says their facility in the east end on King Street East near Centennial Parkway will temporarily reduce hours to between 4 p.m. and 10 p.m. starting Tuesday to shift trained staff to work other parts of the network.

“This measure is necessary to help maintain essential and critical services to our community during this difficult stage of the COVID pandemic,” Dr. Greg Rutledge, deputy chief of staff said in a release on Monday.

“Our urgent care team members have a unique set of skills needed to help address critical staffing shortages and high demand for care at our Charlton inpatient site.”

Typically the centre opens at 8 a.m until 10 at night every day.

Being moved out are a pair of emergency-trained physicians, nine nurses (part time and full time) and clerks who will now move to the Charlton campus emergency department or other parts of the system.

It’s the second move from one of Hamilton’s major hospital networks to redeploy much need staff. On Friday, Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) said the West End Urgent Care Clinic on Main Street East at Macklin Street South will shutter for eight weeks starting Jan. 17.

Five HHS emergency-trained physicians, 10 nurses and other staff (clerks, environmental aides, etc.) will now move to emergency departments (EDs) and other high priority facilities.

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The January ramp-down of surgeries is allowing for the diversions as both of the city’s hospital agencies prepare for more hospitalizations in a growing wave of COVID fueled by the recent Omicron variant.

Last Tuesday in a joint presser between HHS and St. Joe’s, Rutledge said the latter network was enduring “significant admission pressure” with close to 90 patients in wards with COVID and another 15 in intensive care units (ICU).

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“From a percentage pressure perspective, our ICU has been sitting around 95 to 100 per cent capacity and certainly having discussions about how we’re going to manage that with our ongoing HR crises and expected influx of volume,” said Rutledge.

Days later in a HHS town hall, executive vice president and chief operating officer Sharon Pierson suggested that network’s occupancy “feels like 200 per cent,” not the current 102 per cent capacity seen as of the end of last week.

As of Jan. 17, both HHS and St Joe’s have a combined 298 hospitalizations tied to COVID-19 with 38 in ICU’s which was a slight drop off from Friday when the agencies reported 315 and 40 in acute care.

Hamilton has 97 institutional COVID-19 outbreaks as of Monday with 16 in the city’s two hospital networks.

HHS accounts for 11 of them with 161 cases including 64 workers while St. Joe’s has just 12 staffers tied to 54 cases in 6 surges.

Public health declared 14 outbreaks over on the weekend and added 10 more. There are over 1,200 cases tied with the ongoing surges as of Jan. 17.

Close to 600 of those are tied to 41 surges in homes containing seniors including 445 at 25 long-term care homes (LTCH) and 142 in 16 retirement homes. Just over half of the estimated 600 cases are with health care workers.

Heritage Green Nursing Home — the site of Hamilton’s first-ever COVID-19 outbreak back in spring 2020 — is the largest of the ongoing outbreaks, with 85 cases since the surge was declared Jan. 5.

An outbreak in the city’s primary jail, the Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre, was reported by the city to have had five more cases over the weekend to hit 73 as Jan. 17. Just under 50 cases are tied to inmates.

The numbers potentially represent only part of the picture in the city since public health stopped reporting COVID-19 outbreaks in workplaces not tied to high-risk settings like hospitals and congregate settings, which includes long-term care homes and correctional facilities.

Public health reported over 10,200 active cases on Monday, however the number is believed to be higher due to lower testing among residents not in health care facilities.

The city reprted four deaths over the weekend tied to COVID — two over 80 and two in their 70s.

Hamilton health care partners put close to 21,000 shots in arms on the weekend, with Friday seeing the largest intake of close to 8,400 doses.

Over 50,000 more doses have been given out in the city over the past seven days, which is about 6,000 less than the previous seven days.

As of Jan. 17, the city has put about 1.15 million COVID vaccine doses into arms with about 454,000 second visits and 246,000 third shots.

Over 80.8 per cent of eligible Hamiltonians aged five and up have had a pair of doses, while 86.1 per cent have gotten at least one shot.

About 86.8 per cent of residents aged 12-plus have had al least two shots, while about 89.4 per cent have had a first dose.

The city is still behind the provincial average, which has 88.7 per cent of those 12-plus with two doses and 91.4 per cent with a single dose.

More than 92 per cent of those aged 60-plus in the city have had two shots, while more than 62 per cent have had a booster.

Excluding kids aged five to 11, Hamiltonians in the 12-to-24 age group represent the lowest vaccination rates of those eligible in the community at just over 80 per cent having had a pair of doses.

The city is set to slow down vaccinations at its Lime-Ridge clinic mid-month.

As of Monday, the city knocked down the current two shifts a day to just one, allocating the resources to the mobile stream of their fourth dose campaign.

Retirement homes, long-term care homes and high-risk settings are the target of the moving clinics.

The city will also begin a ramp-up of school-based vaccination clinics as well.