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London’s emergency departments are grappling with the “peak” of respiratory virus season but the hospital has so far avoided cancelling surgeries to free up inpatient beds.
London Health Sciences Centre has opened extra beds and is seeing a flood of patients with COVID-19, flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) coming through its two emergency rooms. RSV can lead to serious complications for young children and seniors.
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“Right now, we’re pretty much at the peak of the respiratory season and it’s going to last for the next couple of weeks before we see any drop,” LHSC supervisor David Musyj said Wednesday.
“What LHSC is dealing with right now is, unfortunately, the same as every health care institution across Ontario, Canada and North America.”
LHSC has opened 24 additional inpatient beds, eight at Victoria Hospital and 16 at University Hospital, to deal with the flu season surge, said Deborah Wiseman, vice-president of medicine, emergency services and critical care.
These beds are over and above for what LHSC is funded by the province and come out of the hospital’s bottom line, Musyj said. LHSC is working to address an anticipated $150-million deficit in its 2024-25 budget year. The beds will be open until the end of March.
In previous years, LHSC has had to cancel some elective surgeries to free up bed space and staff for the crush of flu, COVID and RSV cases. This winter it has been able to avoid that.
“We have not had to move around surgeries or reduce surgical volumes while we’ve been managing the expected surge,” Wiseman said, adding LHSC has adjusted some of its surgical lists to do more outpatient procedures, which don’t require a hospital stay.
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Still, LHSC is monitoring its surgical volumes closely, said David Steven, interim chair of LHSC’s medical advisory committee.
“We do our best every single day to get all the cases done, and so far that’s happened, but it’s something we have to pay attention to every day,” he said.
The week of Jan. 12, the latest date data is available, the Middlesex-London Health Unit reported 194 emergency room visits involving patients with flu-like symptoms.
As of the same week, the health unit reported an average of 45 hospital inpatients in London and Middlesex County with COVID-19, flu or RSV.
The health unit reported 81 new lab-confirmed cases of influenza the week of Jan. 12, and three new institutional outbreaks.
Wait times for non-urgent patients at LHSC’s two emergency departments were four hours as of Wednesday afternoon.
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