Health officials across Nova Scotia are raising concerns about bed shortages and overcrowded emergency rooms.
The emergency department at the Valley Regional Hospital in Kentville, N.S. has been overcapacity since mid-January and both the Halifax Infirmary and Dartmouth General Hospital have reported bed shortages.
Karyn Nickerson, the district manager of emergency services for Annapolis Valley Health, says inpatient units are full at the Valley Regional Hospital, and so are the areas designated to take on extra patients.
“Our admission rates are higher and their lengths of stays in hospital are longer because they are sicker,” says Nickerson.
The hospital sees an average of 70 to 75 patients admitted through the emergency department each month, but that number doubled to 149 patients in January, and more than tripled in February with 232 admissions.
Nickerson says the flu and aging population are contributing factors to the increase in traffic and that staff tries to treat the sickest patients first.
“But patients who are in our waiting rooms are waiting longer and that’s because we don’t have bed space to put them because our stretchers are filled with admitted patients,” she says.
Nickerson says the situation is taking a toll on staff, who are also working overcapacity, and paramedics who have been responding to an increased number of calls over the last six to eight weeks.
Jeff Fraser, the operations director of Emergency Health Services, says paramedics responded to 2,000 more emergency calls last month than in February 2014.
He also says that when emergency departments are overcapacity, the only place for them to back up on is ambulance stretchers, and that has a trickledown effect.
“Certainly, if we have 12 ambulances at the emergency department, it’s 12 less than we have out in the street, so we have to continually juggle those resources around,” says Fraser.
Former Nova Scotia health minister Maureen MacDonald says she would like to see more programs like the extended care paramedic program, which was launched by the NDP in 2011. The program allows seniors in 15 Halifax-area nursing homes to be seen by paramedics, rather than going to the ER.
“There’s really no need to take that person to an ER and wait for hours and hours and hours,” says MacDonald.
The CEO-designate for the new provincial health authority says overcrowded emergency departments are a problem across Nova Scotia and across the country.
“So what we need to look at is, are there ways to serve an aging population in different ways?” says Janet Knox.
Know says they will continue to look at the issue when the health authorities merge on April 1.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Jacqueline Foster
