Elective surgeries delayed to free up space in Manitoba hospitals

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This article was published 19/12/2021 (1103 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg operating rooms are being prioritized for only the most urgent cases as the health care system braces for another surge of COVID-19 patients, driven in part by the highly contagious Omicron variant.

On Monday, elective surgeries at Health Sciences Centre, St. Boniface Hospital and Grace Hospital were postponed to allow surgeons to carry out as many cancer, urgent and emergent procedures as possible before Christmas.

“We do understand that these changes may be disappointing for people who are postponed, but it is an attempt to optimize our resources so that we can plan in the future for any increase in our COVID population,” said Dr. Ed Buchel, surgery lead with the province’s health authority, Shared Health.

Buchel said about 1,200 surgeries will be carried out this week in Winnipeg and priority is being given to patients who are in hospital or cancer patients who require surgery urgently.

“We do not want to go into our holiday slowdown with a large number of people in the hospital waiting for surgery,” Buchel said, adding between 40 and 60 people are waiting for emergency surgery at any given time.

“We feel it is a dangerous risk to go in as we normally would because we may not have the capacity to deal with them in a week or two from now during the holiday slowdown.”

Shared Health said an estimated 10 to 15 patients would have their scheduled procedures postponed each day. Surgeries and procedures at Victoria Hospital, Concordia Hospital and Pan Am Clinic are under review.

The surgical shuffle was done ahead of the holiday slowdown and concern the highly contagious Omicron variant could lead to a surge in hospital admissions or cause essential staff to fall ill, Buchel said.

Buchel said changes to surgical slates are imminent in the Southern Health and Prairie Mountain Health regions to create capacity for COVID-19 patients.

At Carman Memorial Hospital, outpatient surgeries and endoscopies scheduled this month and next will be postponed so staff can be deployed to keep 10 beds open at Boundary Trails Health Centre in Winkler.

At Brandon Regional Health Centre, elective endoscopy will be postponed and staff redeployed to the intensive care unit to maintain the current bed base there and to add two beds as needed.

As of Monday, 89 patients were receiving intensive care in the province, including 27 COVID-19 patients, five of whom were admitted over the weekend.

Shared Health officials have said at a rate of two COVID-19 ICU admissions a day, other health services, including surgeries would be reduced to meet demand from COVID-19 patients. At a rate of three or more admissions a day, out-of-province transfers could be necessary.

“We have maximized our resources now as far as we possibly can,” Buchel said. “It is absolutely vital that everybody in the public does whatever they can to limit the spread of the new variant because we will run out of resources if this is allowed to spread rapidly throughout our province.”

The province reported 809 new COVID-19 infections over a three day period ending Monday. Provincial data showed there were 2,183 people with active infections in Manitoba as of Monday and 46 per cent of them had not been fully vaccinated.

The province said 57 per cent of active COVID-19 hospital admissions and 81 per cent of patients in intensive care had not been vaccinated.

A spokesman for Shared Health said the health authority was able to add two staffed ICU beds over the weekend, bringing the total critical care capacity in Manitoba to 112 beds.

Eight critical care nurses with the Canadian Red Cross arrived in Manitoba on Monday and were deployed to the Health Sciences Centre, the spokesman said.

Health Minister Audrey Gordon and Ron Schuler, minister responsible for the Emergency Measures Organization, had asked the federal government to send more than twice that number of nurses — between 15 and 30 — for a six-week period.

In a statement Saturday, a spokesperson for federal Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair confirmed up to eight nurses would be deployed to Manitoba until Jan. 17, with the possibility of an extension. The number of nurses available to Manitoba reflected Ottawa’s supply and the needs both governments outlined during negotiations.

Buchel said the lower than requested number of nurses did not influence the decision to postpone or re-prioritize surgical slates this weekend.

Procedures and surgeries that were postponed may be rescheduled for the end of January or early February, Buchel said.

“If we do not see significant hospitalizations and ICU admissions from the Omicron variant over the next two, three, four weeks, then we will go back to our current slating throughout the province,” Buchel said. “We all have to do our part to make that a reality.”

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca