Guelph General Hospital says they are hopeful and cautiously optimistic as COVID-19 restrictions begin to lift in the province.But Melissa Skinner said in an interview this week that capacity issues the hospital had pre-pandemic have not gone away.“Over the past several years, based on the size of our hospital and the size of our community, each day we have struggled with having enough beds,” she said. “COVID has just exacerbated that and really shown how much pressure there really is on a system and on our hospital.” Doctors’ group proposes Ontario fund new surgical centres to catch up on procedures Even before the pandemic, one official described the situation at Guelph General in October 2019 as “bursting at the seams.”For example, the hospital’s emergency room was seeing 15,000 more annual visits than it was originally designed to handle.Construction to expand the department by 6,400 square feet is currently underway to address overcrowding.As for the current COVID-19 situation, Skinner said the hospital is still seeing high volumes in the emergency department but added that it is manageable and an improvement from just a few weeks ago while Omicron COVID-19 cases were peaking in the community.“The impact of COVID — we are seeing a decline.
But what we are not seeing a decline in is just all of the non-COVID care that patients are requiring,” she said, noting that there were only six inpatient beds available on Tuesday morning.“That’s not a lot of beds when you think about a community our size.
So there is still high demand, not just necessarily always COVID but just all of those other non-COVID patient care demands.”As of Wednesday morning, the hospital had 16 patients with COVID-19 and 28 staff off work either.