B.C. announces plans to re-schedule 30,000 surgeries that were cancelled due to COVID-19 But how to accommodate more patients than normal, while still observing physical distancing?At Mount St.
Joseph’s hospital, the answer was restaurant-style “pagers” handed to surgery patients when they check in.“Once COVID started obviously we had to respect social distancing, so we’ve had to re-do how we manage the flow of the surgical patients,” said Kirsty Carpenter, patient care manager in the ophthalmology department.[ Sign up for our Health IQ newsletter for the latest coronavirus updates ]“It’s a similar system to what you’d see in a restaurant where you’d be waiting for a table and being paged when the table’s ready.” B.C.