Alberta Health Services says surgery patients were diverted from Red Deer’s hospital as of Jan. 31 to facilities in Calgary or Edmonton due to the high volume of cases and staff vacancies.
The diversion is expected to continue for the remainder of the week.
On Tuesday, Red Deer doctors expressed their frustration at having the hospital reach this point.
“Despite best efforts and exhausting all options to bolster operating room capacity at Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre and in surrounding rural sites, AHS has temporarily implemented a surgical diversion at the Red Deer hospital in order to ensure patient safety,” said AHS in a statement released Tuesday afternoon.
As of about 9 p.m. Jan. 31, emergent surgical cases – with the exception of emergency life or limb cases and those patients already admitted to the hospital – were diverted. Patients already on the urgent surgical add list will also be seen in Red Deer and the site will continue with its reduced elective surgery schedules though a small number of elective procedures may be postponed to help create capacity for more urgent cases.
AHS said the high volume of surgery cases is compounded by ongoing vacancies within the anesthesiology team and the site is currently unable to keep pace with the number of cases being placed on the urgent surgical add list. These are cases that need to be treated in less than 72 hours.
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“We anticipate this diversion will remain in place for the remainder of the week due to gaps in anesthesiology support; however site leadership and the surgical department heads continue to monitor the situation and explore all avenues to find additional support in order to resume usual surgical processes as quickly as possible.
“This is not a decision that we take lightly, and it has only been made following extensive conversation and exploration to ensure all possible options have been exhausted.”
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AHS said it regrets the frustration and disruption to patients and their families.
“This also impacts our surgical teams who are doing their utmost with finite resources to see as many patients as quickly as possible. Diverting patients is in no way a reflection of their efforts.”
AHS said it continues to actively recruit additional anesthesiologists as well as operating room nursing staff in order to support increased surgical volumes at Red Deer’s hospital. Additional in-house training also continues to be offered for staff through an operating room training program developed at the site as AHS works towards increasing surgical volumes.