This week's Charlottetown hospital bottleneck prompts calls for action

Some Prince Edward Islanders say they're frustrated after hearing the province's largest hospital was again over capacity for two days this week.

On Thursday, Health P.E.I. said the Queen Elizabeth Hospital's inpatient and emergency departments had reached maximum capacity, warning that people who showed up at the Charlottetown hospital with less severe illnesses and injuries would face longer waits to see a doctor.

The status carried through Friday as well.

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"Over capacity [means] all of our medical beds are full, and as such we would even have a few extra beds that we would open up to accommodate the patient volume," said Terry Campbell, hospital administrator.

"That trickles down to the emergency department, which means that essentially the patient flow is slowed down."

At one point, as many as 23 patients in the emergency department were waiting to be transferred to the inpatient unit. But because they weren't any beds available, Campbell said that created a "bottleneck" in the department.

A similar advisory went out on a Saturday this past June. 

"As always, people are assessed when they present at the emergency department by a triage nurse," a news release said at that time. "People with more serious illness or injuries will be seen more quickly."

Wait times 'horrific'

Marilyn Thompson was in the emergency room Friday morning after her granddaughter was rushed to the hospital by ambulance.

She said she's had a lot of medical issues herself as a result of a stroke, and her husband has a chronic condition, so she's been in the QEH waiting room often.

"In the last year or so, it's been horrific in regards to coming down here and having to wait upwards of eight, 10, 12, sometimes 14 hours to see a physician for sometimes very serious incidents," Thompson said.

"The nurses have been amazing, but there's not enough doctors and there's not enough nurses."

Interim Liberal Leader Hal Perry said a situation like this week's doesn't surprise him, given the province's decision to shut down the intensive care unit at the Prince County Hospital in Summerside, on top of closures at Montague's Kings County Memorial Hospital and the Western Hospital in Alberton.

"The government has done nothing so far to safeguard our own hospitals from further closures and they leave staff and patients to deal with the increased wait times, with delays and with the added stress," Perry said.

"Their failure to address the critical issue — of our province's primary hospitals, emergency and the inpatient departments that are operating right now at over capacity — is unacceptable."

Perry said the province should have a contingency plan for capacity issues at the QEH, and give Islanders a "comprehensive explanation" of its plans.

Bottleneck not due to staff numbers: hospital

But Campbell said while the service restrictions at other P.E.I. facilities do have some impact on patient traffic at the Charlottetown medical hub, they haven't seen a huge spike yet.

"However, I think we do also see that patients that potentially — that are really sick, that could have accessed [those services], do come here as well. So we see that," he said.

Campbell said people who need care should still come to the QEH.

While many areas of the hospital are working with some vacancies and shortages, he said the issue this week had nothing to do with staffing numbers.

The QEH sees on average upwards of 120 people a day. About one third of those are considered less urgent cases that could and ideally should be treated elsewhere.

Campbell acknowledges that with limited walk-in clinics and so many people without family doctors on P.E.I., the emergency department is many Islanders' only option.