The North Bay Regional Health Centre is caring for one ventilated COVID-19 patient from outside the district and another is in transit.
According to Dr. Jennifer Mihill, Head of Anaesthesia and NBRHC COVID-19 Critical Care Preparedness Lead, this could be just the beginning as far as COVID-19 transfer patients go as "the bed situation is quite grim in Ontario and they are running out of ICU beds."
Asked during a media conference, Friday, if locals who depend on NBRHC for health care should be concerned, Mihill admits the question is on everybody's mind.
"We're acutely aware of that concern," she answers. "We constantly assess the situation here, in terms of what is going on in our community for COVID, what are our typical [general hospital] numbers for this time of year. You can never speculate exactly what is going to happen on any given day."
Mihill advises "all of the transfers are COVID patients," and the medical command centre is "trying to distribute the patients throughout the province to alleviate some capacity in Toronto."
Asked what NBRHC's capacity is as far as accepting transfer patients, Mihill shares there are 16 beds in the ICU with another seven to 12 patients could be accommodated in a nearby recovery room in the event of a surge. Mihill says the number of patients that can be accepted ebbs and flows day-to-day with the needs of other patients.
"We constantly assess the situation in terms of keeping capacity for the patients here and still allowing for the transfers to come from the command centre," adds Mihill. Elective surgeries are already ramping down to help, as per a provincial directive.
Our ICU capacity is "such a fluid thing. We actually do bed rounds twice a day in our ICU to assess capacity and where patients are at as far as how much longer they're going to be in the ICU versus being transferred or discharged home."
The patient NBRHC has received is ventilated and likely all of the patients transported to North Bay would be, Mihill expects.
"It's easier and safer to transport a ventilated patient versus somebody that is on the edge or unstable and teetering between oxygen and needing ventilation," she says, adding another transfer concern is the virus becoming airborne inside the vehicles.
Mihill, in full PPE, sums up with, "We are poised to take care of everybody in the community here. We continue to offer the same level of care that we have [always] offered here [and] help southern Ontario because Ontario is in a crisis — and we are ethically bound to help these people. They are running out of space and ventilators. We're keeping that balance."
