It is a busy place that sees as many as 57,000 people come through its doors on a yearly basis.
It is the North Bay Regional Health Centre’s Emergency Department.
Dr. Timothy Percival is the Chief of Department and Medical Director for the Emergency Department.
There are many challenges and every day is different in the ER, where patients from newborns to those over 100 years of age get treatment.
But one of the biggest challenges here is the bed crisis. Dr. Percival says the Emergency Department is getting hit hard by a lack of available beds in the hospital.
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Percival believes the closure of the Lady Isabelle Nursing home and its 66 beds in the summer of 2017 is still impacting the hospital today.
“The beds upstairs are full so more and more people have been having to spend time in emerg for longer and longer periods,” said Percival.
“That is a challenge for us because it takes up space in our department where we could otherwise see patients who would be coming through and getting out in a timely fashion and now we have less and less room to work with because it is taken up by these patients that are inpatients that should rightfully be in other parts of the hospital.”
However, it is not all doom and gloom in the North Bay Regional Health Centre. In fact, Percival says some of the good work in clinics and an increase in family doctors to the region has helped remove some stress from the already busy ER.
“We have seen some plateauing with the number of visits to our emerg which has bucked the trend provincially,” noted Percival.
“Overall in the province of Ontario ER visits are going up and up. Ours has been relatively stable.
“I do not accredit that to technology though. I accredit most of that to the efforts of the hospital in conjunction with the city to recruit more family doctors so there has been better access to primary care and that has allowed that to stabilize because more and more people are able to be seen by their family doctor or nurse practitioner in the community rather than have them go to emerg, and that has made a big difference.”
But Percival admits they still need more help at the ER and finding and recruiting new doctors is a challenge everywhere in Ontario.
“We are competing with everywhere else for staff and now it is affecting the nurses somewhat as well. It is getting harder and harder to keep the place staffed.”