Saskatoon hospitals have capacity for patients again

Saskatoon's St. Paul's Hospital and Royal University Hospital have capacity for patients again after a "critical overcapacity situation,"according to the Saskatoon Health Region.

Yesterday, Sandra Blevins, vice president of Integrated Health Services, said they were one patient away from being in a bad situation.

"Today was a much better day," saidBlevins. "We'd been experiencing a 10-day high. It still is extremely busy, but what we were able to do is bunch up our discharges over what was predicted by removing barriers and making sure we had the supports in place for people to go home."

• Saskatoon hospitals hit overcapacity due to flu

The health region says influenza and other seasonal illnesses are bringing in more patients to the hospital.

On Thursday, there were 35 people waiting to be admitted at RUH and 70 in the emergency department for active treatment. By the afternoon, the number of patients in emergency had only dropped to 60.

"When we are that full, there's no space for them to really work," Blevins added.

On Thursday, a team was brought into RUH and St. Paul's Hospital. The team worked to pull patients out of the emergency department and into a safe care setting in order to give the emergency department some physical space to work and take incoming patients. The on-call team will be closely monitoring the situation over the weekend and into next week, and will step in if assistance is needed.

The Saskatoon Health Region postponed non-emergency surgerieslast yearto deal with and study overcapacity issues. Blevins said that they postponed two surgeries on Thursday because of issues of access to post-operative care.

Last year, health region president Dan Florizone promised an end to hallway medicine, the commonly-used term for putting patients in inappropriate places such as overcrowded patient rooms.