An ongoing shortage of acute-care beds in Windsor forced 22 patients to wait in the emergency room at Windsor Regional Hospital on Thursday and threatened to cancel elective surgeries, the Windsor Star reports. The hospital is running at 103 per cent bed capacity, according to hospital CEO David Musyj.
"For hospitals to run at their best they should be at 90 per cent capacity. Anything over that and the staff burn out" Musyj noted.
The Local Health Integration Network claims it has added extra beds to deal with the long standing bed shortages in Windsor, citing 26 new complex-care beds at Windsor Regional, 60 interim long-term care beds at Leamington Court Retirement Home, and 16 new short-stay beds at Hotel-Dieu hospital.
MPP Taras Natyshak (NDP-Essex), said the Liberal government should have moved faster to redevelop the former Grace Hospital site into a longterm care facility.
A long term care public private partnership (P3) on the old Grace hospital site failed after long delay and left Windsor without needed LTC beds which would help reduce pressure on the hospital. The government is now trying to redevelop the LTC beds through another private developer.
That's the same bed occupancy rate as Niagara, but we don't have any plans to improve it.
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