Solution to capacity issues “lie external to the hospital”, says Acting Chief of Staff
Forty fit-for-discharge patients left in the hospital, and one Emergency patient waiting five days for admission.
Those are two grim statistics from the hospital for the month of March.
On Tuesday, March 18, King Edward Memorial was overcrowded with 34 patients waiting in the Emergency Department for beds elsewhere in the facility.
The hospital activated its second-highest alert level, and nurses aids temporarily downed tools to highlight the stress they were under.
However, Dr. Anna Neilson-Williams, Acting Chief of Staff, says the hospital would have had enough beds to cope with a recent influx of cases – if patients who don’t need hospital care were being cared for in the community.
Over 40 medically fit-for-discharge patients remained in the hospital at the time of the capacity crunch. Some had to be doubled-up in Acute Care rooms to enable the hospital to admit some of the patients waiting in Emergency.
The situation calmed down after a day, but Dr Neilson-Williams told Bermuda Broadcasting that “it’s likely that we may be facing this scenario again”.
In an extended interview, she says “I think the answers lie external to the hospital… we’re already saying these individuals don’t necessarily require hospital care. Some of them do required skilled nursing care, but that does exist within the community, albeit not necessarily the number that’s needed.”
“…what is needed is more facilities… perhaps a different way of supporting families – maybe it’s more carer hours. Maybe it’s some benefit to allow for individuals to achieve a financing a carer, and working with families in a way that we can re-assimilate their loved ones back into the community.”
When asked how long the hospital has been aware of the growing problem, Dr Neilson-Williams says the data was already there, even pre-pandemic, to show we need more continuing care for patients leaving the hospital.
She says, “what we’ve seen [in] trends around the world is an aging demographic… far more chronic diseases, diabetes, heart disease… So we have an older age of patient coming into the hospital with more complexities in terms of their care needs.”
Hurricane damage to a hospital building in 2014, and the rising cost of living, also play a role in the ongoing capacity crisis, Dr Neilson-Williams says.
WATCH our wide-ranging interview above, conducted a few days after the recent capacity issues.
