The CEO of Windsor Regional Hospital is calling on the province to develop a plan to deal with outbreaks that put a strain on bed space.
The hospital, along with several others across the province, have been dealing with capacity issues due to an increase in influenza and other respiratory-related illnesses.
With that in mind, David Musyj believes it's time to develop a plan that would automatically allow hospitals to open-up long-term care beds, without having to ask for approval, in an effort to take the strain off the acute care beds at the hospitals.
"We do that now then come next December, when faced hopefully not like this, we automatically implement it," says Musyj. "We don't have to wait for approvals. It's automatically flicked like a switch and off we go. It relieves the capacity off the acute care organization, even temporarily."
Musyj also believes the plan would save money; "Hotel-Dieu Grace sub-acute has about 50 to 60 alternative level of care patients waiting for long-term care. It costs them around $450 a day to take care of those patients in their facility. If those patients were able to be moved to long-term care at $150 a day, there's your savings."
As of today, Windsor Regional Hospital has 26 'Admit No Bed' patients between both campuses, with both well above capacity.
Musyj estimates its costing the hospital $28,000 a day to operate the beds and says the cost is closing in on $2-million dollars since the situation began around mid-December.