Horizon Health CEO Dr. John Dornan says the situation inside New Brunswick hospitals is about the worst it’s been through the entire pandemic.
He says there’s more COVID-19 in the community, and more people in hospital with the virus than ever before.
Dornan adds he is worried people are not treating COVID-19 as seriously as they once did.
"The sense in the community, in our community, that it’s not so severe, leads to less masking than we had seen in the past. I can go to a grocery store and there may be three people there wearing a mask," he told CTV Atlantic in an interview.
When asked if he thinks masks should be mandated again, Dornan said he wanted to see people doing it themselves.
"I would like to see New Brunswickers practise social distancing and wearing a mask without necessarily having to demand that they do that – because what happens? People push back," he said. "Why wouldn’t you help us by just maintaining social distances without being regulated or forced to do so?"
He says there are about 200 people in hospital with or because of COVID-19, which impacts how staff operate. It means more timely work, including putting on proper personal protective equipment.
But while Horizon is at a "very large point of hospital occupancy because of COVID-19," Dornan says their infectious disease experts believe New Brunswick is at, or is just on the other side, of a peak, and relief could be coming in the next few weeks.
He says there are still hundreds of health-care workers off the job because of the virus, putting a strain on a system that’s already short-staffed.
Paula Doucet of the New Brunswick Nurses Union told CTV Atlantic Thursday there are about 1,300 nurse vacancies across the province.
Horizon tweeted twice this week that its emergency rooms are critically understaffed, asking the public to only seek treatment there if it’s an emergency.
Dornan says emergency departments are for emergencies, and people should be looking elsewhere for care if it isn’t urgent – like 811, or virtual care.
"We have nursing shortages on almost every ward, certainly every hospital in New Brunswick," he said.
Finding a solution for offload delays
The staffing shortage has caused a ripple effect, including for paramedics. Ambulances are waiting longer outside hospitals to drop off patients, they say, because there are not enough workers inside to staff a bed.
"It’s an embarrassing phenomenon. So what we are looking at doing, for example, if people are very ill, they get put on a hospital bed immediately," said Dornan. "If people are not that unwell, what we call the four’s and five’s, they could be moved to a waiting room area and don’t necessarily need to occupy an ambulance, stretcher and personnel. For those people who are in between that …we assess them when they come in so that we know they haven’t gotten worse on the ambulance ride, that they meet the same criteria that we use in our emergency departments and we are putting into place measures to get those people on to a bed sooner than later."
That system has already started. He says a solution for Saint John may be different for another city hospital, so each region has a local group working on the problem and trying to find a fix that meets their needs. He’s hoping to see results in a few weeks.
When asked about some of the criticisms facing Horizon, Dornan said they’re doing the best they can.
"We do not do everything on the exact moment as prescribed, there are delays in care at times, this is because we’re under staffed … there’s very few areas in Horizon that are fully staffed and so we are experiencing not only COVID but staff absences for other reasons … so yes, we are not functioning at full staff, yes that has an impact on our ability to deliver all aspects of a person’s care at an exact time … are we falling apart? No," he said.
