gslade@medicinehatnews.com@MHNGillianSlade
Alberta Health Services is confident that the south zone and Medicine Hat Regional Hospital are prepared should there be a sudden surge in the number of COVID patients needing hospitalization.
Linda Iwasiw, acting chief of the south zone for AHS, says the average hospital occupancy rate is 75 to 80 per cent. MHRH currently has 196 acute and ICU beds combined.
On Wednesday morning there were 16 COVID patients in hospitals across the south zone, said Iwasiw. About a week ago there were 25. In July there was one day when it had reached 18.
If there is a sudden increase in people being admitted in the south zone it would not happen instantly.
“A surge does not happen in eight hours. It would grow over 24 to 48 hours,” said Iwasiw.
Alberta has a total of 8,500 hospital beds with plans for 2,250 of them to care for individuals with COVID-19.
In March when AHS was preparing for a model that showed a rapid increase in COVID hospitalizations, the south zone prepared for 200 beds and 60 of those were at MHRH. To accomplish this, non-urgent surgeries were postponed.
Iwasiw says this time the planning is a provincewide strategy rather than at the zone level. Rather than discussing available beds within the zone or at MHRH, the talk is about the whole province.
Some capacity would come from freeing up existing bed space by providing community care where possible. This could also mean moving seniors into seniors’ residences where appropriate. There is also the potential for moving patients to other hospitals where there is spare capacity.
While the first approach is to care for a patient in the hospital close to where they live, ICU and critical care could take place in other communities if necessary, said Iwasiw.
Hospital staff have been working extremely hard and are prepared for COVID and non-COVID patients, said Iwasiw.
They’re “coping well” but teams are “getting tired,” she said. “They have done and are continuing to do an incredible job.”
Supplies of PPE (personal protective equipment) are stable across the province, she noted.
By the end of April the province was to have 761 ventilators. Rather than identifying a specific number for the south zone or each hospital, Iwasiw says ventilators can be moved around to zones or hospitals where they are needed most.
Each morning there is a report on how many ventilators are in use and their locations. If additional ventilators are anticipated at a specific hospital they are moved there from somewhere else in the province.
