Like hospitals across Ontario, overcrowding at Windsor Regional Hospital and Erie Shores Healthcare is critical.
A leaked Ontario Health report published by the Toronto Star showed hospitals across the province face multiple crises. Almost every healthcare profession is short-staffed, and patient volumes are up. Patients are sicker, and they're staying longer.
Locally, cases of COVID-19, influenza and RSV are spiking. Chief Nursing Executive and Chief Operating Officer at Windsor Regional Hospital Karen Riddell told WindsorNewsToday.ca some pediatric patients have all three viruses.
However, Riddell said COVID-19 is not to blame.
"What we're experiencing right now is multiple pressures on the healthcare system," she said. "Some of these challenges just not have been overcome. Some of these problems have existed for a very long time."
She recalled a nursing shortage when she graduated from nursing school in 1989.
The report from the provincial agency showed nine in ten patients in emergency rooms could wait an average of 45 hours for an inpatient bed. That's an increase of 40 per cent from last year.
At Windsor Regional, Riddell counted 41 patients who had been admitted but were still waiting in the emergency room for a bed on a floor. She said they could wait up to 20 hours.
The situation at Erie Shores Healthcare is similar. The smaller hospital had 13 patients waiting for an inpatient bed on Wednesday morning. They could also expect to wait 20 hours.
Erie Shores Healthcare is putting acute care patients in rehabilitation beds to ease congestion. Spokesperson Kevin Black said it was operating at 135 per cent capacity.
Back at Windsor Regional Hospital, Riddell said patients are sicker than they used to be.
"What we're seeing with the acute illness of patients is that they're also staying longer in hospitals, so our average length of stay for patients is two days more than was pre-COVID," she added.
The provincial report was leaked to the media by Liberal MPP and emergency room physician Doctor Adil Shamji. He described a system on life support.
"The state of the healthcare system is plummeting," said Shamji.
Riddell is not as dramatic. She credited the Ontario government for recent efforts to boost healthcare employment. An increase in admissions to nursing schools, speeding up the registration process for foreign nurses and helping retirees return to the workforce help, but it'll take time to see the impact.
She did say the government needs to do more to keep nurses in Ontario.
"We can add seats [in nursing schools], but we need to keep them here working in the province," she explained. "If we don't have positions for them or the grass is greener across the border, we're not competitive for wages and salaries, it's very hard to keep people."
