TORONTO, July 3 (Reuters) – Health authorities across Canada have reduced the hours of hospital emergency rooms and urgent care clinics in recent weeks, a move that in some cases could continue into the summer due to a surge in patients and staff shortages .
The situation, clinicians say, is linked to a resurgence of viral infections like COVID-19 among adults and children and pressure from others to seek care, delayed by the pandemic and exacerbated by the large number of sick or burned-out health care workers out there.
The tension has led to scenes of clogged hospital corridors and overcrowded clinic waiting rooms, hours of waiting for hospital care and occupancy rates of more than 100% in children’s hospitals. It also reignited the debate about systemic problems in the government-funded health care system.
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On Thursday, the Perth and Smiths Falls District Hospital in eastern Ontario announced that its Perth emergency department will be closed from Saturday to Thursday due to an outbreak of COVID-19 affecting staff.
“It’s like the four horsemen of the apocalypse are descending on us in health care at once,” said Alan Drummond, a family physician and emergency physician based in the city, which is home to about 6,000 people.
Drummond, who spoke to Reuters before the closure was announced, saw patients waiting 20 hours to be admitted, a situation that could lead to worsening conditions or even medical errors. He blames the situation on years of inadequate funding for hospital beds and community care.
While hospitals in small towns across Canada sometimes reduce hours, regional health centers do so less often.
Ontario’s health ministry did not say how many hospitals in the province, Canada’s most populous, were affected by partial or temporary closures, but said it had taken measures to address the problem, including the retention of nurses and other health workers.
“Hospitals sometimes have to make the difficult decision to temporarily close their emergency departments so that operations can continue in the rest of the hospital,” a ministry spokesman said.
Hospitals in Quebec, the country’s second-largest province, New Brunswick and Manitoba also have wards partially closed or temporarily reduced hours for anywhere from several weeks to several months, according to hospital statements.
In Kingston, Ontario, Hotel Dieu Hospital’s emergency clinic has reduced hours over the Canada Day long weekend. A spokesman for the Kingston Health Sciences Center described the move, which began on Friday, as a planned one-off reduction, but added that “staffing shortages and the current spike in patient volume are expected to continue into the summer.”
Children have been hit hard by the health crisis as youngsters who have not been previously exposed to a range of viruses succumbed to illness in the spring as many abandoned the face masks used to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
The Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa, the nation’s capital, was operating at between 110% and 120% capacity for weeks in May and early June. Employment was at a record high for the month of May, a spokesman said.
Short staffing and growing patient numbers are “kind of like that perfect storm,” said Catherine Smart, a pediatrician who is president of the Canadian Medical Association.
FUNDING DEBATE
Canada has the fourth-lowest number of funded emergency beds per capita among countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, according to the OECD, and the Commonwealth Fund ranks Canada’s health care system second among 11 rich countries.
Some blame underfunding of the health care system dating back to the 1990s, when Canada’s federal government cut spending to rein in the country’s deficit.
Others, such as the right-wing Fraser Institute, say the government-funded system itself is the root cause of the problems, suggesting a shift to a privately paid model.
Canada may have little time to waste.
Rami Rahal, vice-president of the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer, said cancer rates and deaths are at risk of worsening in the country because of long periods when screening is missed or delayed and treatment is delayed.
“We cannot find a way out of this crisis,” he said. “We need to find innovative ways to deliver care.”
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Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny; Editing by Paul Simao
Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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