The surgery schedule will be reduced to open more beds during the COVID19 outbreak
The surgery schedule at Windsor Regional Hospital will be reduced to help deal with the COVID-19 outbreak.
Speaking on AM800's The Morning Drive, Windsor Regional Hospital CEO David Musyj, said that they will be working with Erie Shores Healthcare in Leamington, the Chatham Health Alliance and Bluewater Health in Sarnia to prepare a surgical plan for the region.
Musyj said they will be meeting at 12 p.m. to begin looking at the surgery schedule.
"You have to use actual guidelines, which we have in place, to talk about which procedures get closed first in a systematic fashion," he said.
Musyj points out that "ramping down" the surgery schedule creates capacity in the system.
"That frees up a considerable amount of beds. For us, it frees up between our two campuses, close to 150 beds," he said.
Musyj adds that you want to reduce the number of patients coming into the hospital for a scheduled procedure.
"Even though it's very important to them, the chances of possibly getting COVID increase, so you want to reduce those chances as well," said Musyj.
The Ontario Ministry of Health issued a statement Sunday saying -- quote -- "the province is requesting that all hospitals further implement pandemic plans by carefully ramping down elective surgeries and other non-emergent clinical activity."