Daily BrewB.C. hospital uses lobby to treat ER overflow
Tim Hortons is known for many things, including its addictive coffee and mile-long lineups, but a franchise at the Royal Columbian Hospital has added a new dimension to its roster: makeshift ER.
Last March, overcrowding at the Vancouver-area hospital forced staff to treat patients in the building's coffee shop in order to accommodate a sudden influx of patients.
On Tuesday, as the National Post reports, the chronically overcrowded hospital was forced to repeat the move when an unexpected surge of patients — ranging from winter flu sufferers to car crash victims — led to a sea of stretchers spilling out into hallways, waiting rooms, and finally, the lobby.
Resourceful staff set up a row of privacy screens so that patients who required immediate attention would be partially shielded from the throngs of people milling around the area.
That did little to appease Jan Mise in October, when the 74-year-old spent two hours being treated for chest problems by paramedics against in the waiting room.
"It was, excuse my language, bloody ridiculous," she told the paper on Wednesday, recalling the event. "There was no privacy. If you have to go to the washroom, you just jolly well get your butt off that stretcher and go yourself. So that's what I did. It's disgusting. It's indescribable. Until you actually see it yourself, you don't believe the news reports you see on TV."
Though overcrowding has long been an issue for the 410-bed hospital, a spokesman for the Fraser Health Authority said neither incident constitutes the norm.
"It's quite common for us to have patients in overflow," Roy Thorpe-Dorward told the paper. "But to open up in the lobby, we haven't done anything that extraordinary since last spring."
He added that the busy holiday season, coupled with the closure of many family doctor's offices, also contributed to the problem, and that the problem had cleared up by Wednesday.
Scenes like the one on Tuesday, however, have become a growing problem for the hospital. Since the province shuttered nearby St. Mary's Hospital in 2004, the Royal Columbian is now one of only two trauma centres in B.C. and is expected to serve a third of its population.
"This is not a new story. Every once in a while it gets media attention, but it just shows the demand for our services really outweighs our current capacity. It has been a chronic problem," said Royal Columbian Hospital Foundation vice-president, Laurie Tetarenko.
Over the past two years, the Foundation has appealed to the province to approve plans for an expansion, but yesterday a spokesperson for the Ministry of Health said the province would need to consider the reality of its fiscal situation before committing any capital.
