Moving patients between hospitals is normal ‘load levelling’ procedure

By Gillian Slade Southern Alberta Newspapers on March 26, 2021.

Alberta Health Services says Medicine Hat Regional Hospital is hosting five COVID-19-positive patients, but they aren’t all local.

Dr. Aaron Low, AHS South zone medical director, says two of the five patients at MHRH are in the ICU, and both were redirected from the west side of the South zone.

“There are two (COVID) patients in Medicine Hat ICU … both were redirected from the west side of the zone to Medicine Hat,” said Low.

He says this is something that takes place even unrelated to COVID. People are sometimes moved from rural to regional centres based on availability.

“We look at our bed capacity from a zone perspective. We sometimes call this load levelling,” said Low.

Alberta Health Services says there were 39 COVID-19 positive patients in hospitals in the South zone on Thursday morning, 32 of which were in Chinook Regional Hospital in Lethbridge, with seven of those in the ICU.

Chinook hospital has capacity for 14 patients in its ICU. On Thursday seven beds had COVID patients and two were non-COVID patients, says Low.