Lounge chairs and eight existing beds at Red Deer Regional Hospital are part of a plan to reduce the length of time emergency department patients are waiting to be admitted to hospital beds.
The beds and chairs in eight patient lounges will be used by patients that can be discharged so emergency patients can take their beds.
If no one is ready for discharge, existing patients could be moved to a nearby hospital or hospital in their home community, or a long-term care facility. Home care support would also be considered so the patient can return home.
It’s all part of Alberta Health Services’ new overcapacity protocols to reduce wait-times to under eight hours for emergency patients who need beds.
The plan goes into effect on Monday.
Sylvia Barron, the hospital’s director nursing administration, said hiring more staff is not required.
“We believe right now we can do it with the current staff we have. We do move patients now on a regular basis. The difference will be it’s going to be a little bit faster,” Barron said on Friday.
Other strategies to deal with overcapacity include delaying outpatient tests to expediate emergency department tests, using overcapacity spaces in the emergency department to see patients, and redeploying staff to help with discharge planning.
Protocols were developed in November in response to Alberta’s emergency care crisis.
Red Deer has the longest average wait time to admit emergency patients to a hospital bed compared to Alberta’s other regional hospitals.
Red Deer patients wait an median average of 9.1 hours before being admitted to the hospital compared to 4.6 hours in Lethbridge, 4.4 hours in Medicine Hat, 4.0 hours in Fort McMurray and 7.3 in Grande Prairie.
The median average means half the patients waited longer than 9.1 hours in Red Deer and half had shorter waits.
New protocols for each hospital and zone in the province are similar, but have been customized to meet local population needs.
The protocols will be re-evaluated in January.
Dr. Walter Hogarth, an emergency physician at Red Deer hospital for 18 years, said in the past emergency staff would hit a dead end trying to find beds for their patients on other wards.
“Now there’s been political recognition. There’s been AHS recognition that this problem has to be solved. It’s been mandated from above that patients will move and administrators will be accountable for it happening,” Hogarth said.
“When we declare we’re in trouble, patients will go upstairs with no refusal from upstairs. And upstairs, they now have a plan to deal with this patient once they get there.”
It’s always been seen as a problem the emergency room should deal with, he said.
“We’ve spent years re-engineering how we deal with patients here to be more efficient. But there’s a huge backlog. There’s no exit. You can only do so much.”
Moving a patient, who has been waiting to be admitted, out of a bed in emergency will allow others in emergency to be treated quicker, he said.
“On any hour, any day over the past year, one third of our (emergency) beds are filled with admitted patients so you’re working at two-thirds capacity and the nurses are busy taking care of those patients.”
Triggers that would activate overcapacity protocols in Red Deer include more than one of the following:
l More than 35 per cent of emergency department care spaces are blocked due to patients awaiting admission, diagnostics or consults.
l No emergency department space is available for new urgent patients.
l Percentage of emergency department occupancy exceeds 110 per cent.
l Percentage of inpatient occupancy exceeds 100 per cent.
l Inpatient hospital beds are all occupied.
l EMS resources are strained and could affect response times.
l More than five patients who have been waiting eight hours or longer for a hospital bed since the decision was made to admit them.
szielinski@www.reddeeradvocate.com