It seems the big issue is that people used to avoid Peel Memorial like the plague, dispersing to all the neighbouring hospitals, and they underestimated the number who would return to a Brampton hospital once Civic opened. Perhaps these people will realize that Civic is just as overcrowded, and disperse once again.
State-of-the-art hospital swamped by patients
Brampton facility still working out the bugs as it draws more and sicker people from area hospitals
Nov 16, 2007 04:30 AM
Michele Henry
Staff Reporter
Just three weeks after opening, Brampton's state-of-the-art hospital admits it is trying to cope with many more and far sicker patients than expected.
Compared with its predecessor Peel Memorial, Brampton Civic has seen more than a 20 per cent increase in emergency patients.
And the number who are seriously ill has doubled.
The increase in visits to the $887 million hospital has been matched by a corresponding decrease in patients visiting Etobicoke General, Trillium Health Centre, Credit Valley Hospital and Georgetown, the hospital closest to the Civic.
Adding to Brampton Civic's problems are the complexities of the cutting-edge technology and the newness of the surroundings for its 3,725 staff.
"It's bigger. More modern. More in-patient beds. The emergency is spacious and bigger. Everything about this hospital is better. If I was a community member I'd want to go here too," said Dr. Naveed Mohammad, corporate chief of emergency medicine for William Osler Health Centre, which includes the Civic and Etobicoke General.
Starting today, the hospital will try to adjust to the influx by adding more physicians to each shift and tweaking schedules and duties.
If patients keep arriving at the current rate – and officials think they will – instead of 80,000 emergency room visits this year, the hospital will see 113,000.
Wait times have been as high as four hours, but Mohammad said that is misleading. While other hospitals calculate waits from the moment a patient presents at triage to the time they see a doctor, the Civic has added another step: a greet nurse who ushers sicker patients to triage faster.
"So the time to physician is longer," Mohammad said. "Before this, all the time spent in line didn't get captured. This adds another time element."
While service is far better than it was the first day, Mohammad said the hospital still has a way to go.
Ryan Downer, 26, who spent three hours yesterday waiting to be checked by a doctor after falling down stairs at work, said he had to go through the triage process twice because one nurse forgot to fill out the relevant forms. "They're still learning the system," he said. "Everybody thinks bigger hospital, no wait. That's not how it is."
Peel Memorial's cramped emergency room and ailing 80-year-old facility forced 33 per cent of patients in the catchment area to seek care further afield. Not anymore.
The Civic, a 1.2 million-square-foot building boasts an advanced computer system and North America's first wireless handheld nurse call device. It is also environmentally friendly, using various glass technologies to spill light from a grand atrium into inner corridors. And, in parts of the building primarily used during the day, air, heat and light systems are on timers that turn down automatically at night.
But it takes getting used to. In a letter to the community, Robert Richards, William Osler president and CEO, asked for patience as the staff adjusts.
Imagine, he wrote, having to get used to "different operating rooms, and lights, and anesthesia machines/scopes/tables. ... Imagine a different security system, door lock system, access routes. ... Imagine different workstations, computers, new paperless systems. Now imagine them all at once."
