Cape Breton Regional Hospital coping with COVID-19 thanks to reduced services

A selective reduction in medical services in hospitalsthat was ordered to prepare for a possible increase in COVID-19 patients across Nova Scotia is already paying off at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital, the health authority says.

Brett MacDougall, executive director of operations for the health authority's eastern zone, said the regional hospital normally has three in-patient beds set aside for people infected with the virus, but there are now four positive patients.

The number of medical in-patient beds was able to expand right away, he said, due to the reduction of blood collections and some surgeries.

"That's not something that we take lightly," he told CBC's Information Morning Cape Breton. "We've tried to plan week by week. We didn't go into a sort of a big-bang approach where we closed everything down."

The hospital normally has two beds reserved in intensive care for COVID-19 patients, but those are not being used, yet, MacDougall said.

The service reductions that started this week have helped the eastern zone handle a huge increase in testing for the virus and made beds and nurses available as the number of cases climbs across the province.

Services not reduced indefinitely

The reductions mean the zone is prepared to look after its own patients and can scale up to handle those from other zones, if that becomes necessary, he said.

"We're being a bit more purposeful this time," he said. "We're going at it week by week or every two weeks, so that we're not saying, 'OK, this service is closed for the next indefinite period of time.'"

The health authority postponed surgeries for two weeks at the Northside General Hospital in North Sydney and reduced planned surgical admissions at the regional hospital in Sydney from a normal high of 14 per day down to four, MacDougall said.

St. Martha's Regional Hospital in Antigonish has one in-patient bed and one ICU bed available any time for COVID-positive patients, but selective service reductions mean those can also be expanded as needed, he said.

That could include taking patients from other areas, MacDougall said.

"Each zone is looking at what capabilities they may have to help respond to any other zone that may be in additional pressure in relation to either COVID in-patient capacity or COVID ICU capacity and/or normal operations," he said.

That usually happens anyway, but with the vast majority of cases occurring in the central zone, that practice is increasingly important.

On Wednesday, the government announced 175 new cases, with 149 of those in the central zone.

"We do try and extend ourselves out and help other areas and other regions across the province, but particularly now, with increased activity, there could be requests from central zone for us to assist them and we would be happy to help them."

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