Surrey Memorial Hospital is considering leased accommodation including hotels to ease overcrowding

The health authority that oversees one of B.C.’s busiest hospitals is considering leasing transitional accommodation for patients who no longer require urgent care, in hopes of moving those patients off the site. The crowd that has been prevailing in the hospital for months will be reduced.

Fraser Health said Tuesday the residence will be for patients who do not require acute care but who cannot go home for various reasons. Nearby hotels are being considered as possible options for rental space.

“Fraser Health will provide nearby housing for patients who need to stay for a short period of time in a transitional housing environment. These patients typically do not require acute care services, and receive more appropriate care in a transitional housing environment. “The transitional housing locations will offer on-site community support such as nursing, allied health and safety,” it said in an emailed statement.

“We will have more to say about this in the coming weeks.”

Fraser Health is the latest health authority in Canada to look to transitional housing for extra room while it deals with a shortage of space within its walls.

This strategy, which has been used in Ontario and Nova Scotia, has been welcomed by some physicians wanting more beds. But some see it as a symptom of greater pressure on B.C.’s health-care system.

“It’s always worrisome when you have patients who have either been discharged or are still in those facilities for the purpose of hospital care,” said Andrew Longhurst, a health policy researcher and PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby. Are admitted which are not hospitals.” , B.C

“I think it reflects the overburdened nature of our health care system at this time.”

The hospital has been full for years

Overcrowding has been well-documented at Surrey Memorial Hospital, which is in one of B.C.’s fastest-growing cities, with physicians from multiple departments speaking out this spring about workloads impacting patient safety. , which involves people dying in the hallway and potentially contributing to the death. A newborn baby in 2020.

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Dr. Claudine Stornes-Bliss, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Surrey Memorial Hospital, said severely inadequate resources are compromising patient safety within the hospital’s family delivery unit.

The provincial government announced more funding for the hospital in June. Fraser Health said the leased accommodation would be part of the overcrowding solution discussed at the time, but did not provide a spokesperson to CBC News to provide more details on the infection centres.

BC’s Ministry of Health deferred to Fraser Health for comment.

Claudine Starnes-Bliss, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Surrey Memorial Hospital, said housing can help if beds become vacant, but determining which patients will stay and which patients will go can be challenging.

“Do I think this is a long-term solution? Not at all… but we don’t have enough beds to accommodate everyone right now,” he said. “I think there should be very, very, very, very clear guidelines about how decisions are made.”

Transitional centers are becoming a growing trend in Ontario. For example, hospitals in Ottawa have moved patients who no longer require acute care into transitional care units in retirement and long-term care homes, while in Hamilton a converted hotel was used for the local hospital as a “denting “Convenience”.

In Nova Scotia, health officials are opening a new transitional care center in the Bedford community sometime next year. The 68-bed center near Halifax will also serve as a midway point for patients who don’t need long-term acute care but can’t go home.

Providing alternative levels of care

The facilities were designated for patients who require an alternative level of care, or ALC.

Some of those patients still need physical therapy, while others are waiting for a place in a long-term care facility or some type of affordable housing. Fifteen doctors and more than 100 nurses worked at the facility in Hamilton to meet some of those needs, while providing access to specialists such as speech pathologists and social workers.

Dr. Samir Sinha, director of geriatrics at Mount Sinai Health and University Health Network in Toronto, said patients with the ALC designation fill about 15 per cent of acute-care hospital beds across Canada — meaning about one out of seven hospital beds. There are patients on one. Those who don’t need to be there, but have nowhere else to go.

Health care researcher Longhurst says transitional centers can be helpful as a short-term solution, but do not address the root causes of hospital overcrowding.

He said health care authorities need to reduce the load on hospitals by introducing measures such as indoor masking to reduce the spread of COVID-19 – Particularly during “tripletdemic” flu seasons. – And provide better access to primary care, so that hospitals are no longer the only option people have.

“I think it’s very disturbing,” Longhurst said. “Provincial health systems across this country are in serious crisis, and yet we lack leadership and people who are willing to talk about how we try to reduce the burden on health services.”

Stornes-Bliss agreed that the broader system needed overhaul.

“We need to stop putting Band-Aids on broken bones,” he said.