Grey Bruce Health Services President and CEO Gary Sims says the latter half of 2021 has been busy at local hospitals, and it hasn’t been all COVID-19 patients.
“My occupancy has never been higher, I think in 20 years— than it has been in the last six months,” says Sims, noting it isn’t the Delta or Omicron patients.
“What it is, is the amount of people that did not get care in that last year and a half—who stayed home, who didn’t come to hospital, who weren’t diagnosed, didn’t go to their doctors. They’re now showing up sicker, and so now our floors are fuller than they’ve ever been,” says Sims.
Sims says traditionally, the hospital operates at about 95-96 per cent capacity, saying, “We are presently, probably in the last six months running at around 110 per cent all the time. We have more patients in the hospital than we have beds for, and we have more activity than we’re actually scheduled for, and then along comes Omicron.”
Sims says they’re currently seeing both Omicron and Delta variants in the people who have been hospitalized due to COVID-19 recently.
“The highest risk, I would say right now to the health system is human resource risk with Omicron and if people get so infected we can’t get them to work. Then secondly it’s the surge that could come from Omicron,” says Sims.
He notes, “Even though more people are getting Omicron, less are consequently admitted because the vaccines have done a really good job of either having no symptomology even though you get the infection, or you have decreased symptomology so you don’t get hospitalized. All that being said…The potential sheer volume of Omicron infections in the unvaccinated and in the vulnerable-vaccinated can still see a large wave of people hit the hospital and overwhelm it.”
Sims says, “I respect people’s choices, but if I could say one thing to people for this year and the next year coming—get your vaccinations. It’s obvious it works. We’re seeing it play out around the world and the best thing we can do for each other and to support our community is to be vaccinated.”
Grey Bruce Health Services, which runs six hospitals and an addiction treatment centre lost 34 staff members after its vaccination policy was put into full effect on December 3rd.
Sims says it’s always difficult to let people go, adding, “I recognize that people will think, ‘how can you possibly do that when there’s such a difficult HR problem going across the province?’ The reality is we have to keep people safe,” Sims says, adding “If you add all our volunteers, all our staff and all our physicians, it’s less than one per cent that got let go. If one per cent are released by their own choice basically, then we are keeping everybody safe. That’s the right thing to do. It’s the right science.”
The hospital organization also welcomed 14 new physicians and one midwife over the past year. The new group of physicians includes specialists in Dentistry, Family Practice, Geriatrics, Medical Imaging, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Pathology and Psychiatry (adult, and child and adolescent).
Looking ahead at 2022, Sims says a proposal for a wellness and addiction treatment facility at the former Bayview Public School building in Owen Sound is currently before the Ministry.
He explains, “There was a gap between acute services and people who live on the street and struggle every day with housing safety, food safety, physical safety. So what this creates is an environment that gives counselling and support for a longer period of time as well as a type of housing structure.”
Sims says people would be able to use the centre to recover over a six-month to a two-year period.
According to Sims, it may be the first centre of its kind in Canada if it’s approved.
He notes GBHS’ Director of Mental Health and Addictions Services Naomi Vodden’s proposal is very similar to what Ontario Associate Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Michael Tibollo’s, PHD had actually been on, which is a model that exists in Europe. Sims says Tibollo has been working with GBHS to move the proposal along.
He adds, “We went back and looked at the reviews that have occurred previous to this on mental health services in the Grey Bruce area and there were ten things—nine of them would be solved by this one initiative.”
Sims says hopes to find out if it’s approved by the end of January. “We hope the community will welcome it, recognizing all the good it can do.”
Also in the upcoming year, a virtual ER option will be coming to the community in 2022, “We got approval and we just got some funding for it,” (about $100,000) says Sims, adding the goal is to start it in the new year. “I’m hoping it works for people because I think it’s part of our future,” adding, “COVID has certainly highlighted the benefits and use of virtual care. I don’t think it’s the answer to everything in any way at all, in fact always seeing someone in person is a great thing, however, I think the future says there’s a beauty to having that option available for people.”
Sims also hopes to bring the new CT scanner to the Saugeen Memorial Hospital in Southampton in 2022. The ‘Bring Tom to Town’ fundraising campaign is underway for a Computed Tomography (CT) Scanner.
He’d also like to see the construction of the new Markdale hospital near completion. The hospital is expected to open sometime in 2023.
Sims says GBHS has also started to post patient stories online, explaining, “One of the things we realized in the last year was that we don’t tell our story enough. We are always talking about COVID or a crisis, but what we don’t tell are our real patients’ stories, and we’ve started this new process,” he adds, “They’re quite beautiful to see. They’re sad in many cases, but they’re also beautiful.”
Sim’s list of highlights for GBHS in 2021 include the new MRI machine going into the Owen Sound Regional Hospital and the construction of the new cataract suite in Meaford which is currently underway, “That for me, is a big change in bringing some really good technology to the region,” says Sims.
Looking back at 2021, he adds, “The leadership, the camaraderie, the support, EMS, long-term care folks, public health, my colleagues to the south of me in South Bruce Grey (Health Centre) and Hanover— they’ve been sending staff up to help us out, we’ve been supporting them back and forth with expertise. We’ve done things in this year that have never been done in healthcare. We’ve had high-tech communication between critical services to ourselves to help us manage more critical patients than we’ve ever had to do before. The fact that we brought on patients from other provinces and had them airlifted in on a regular basis–It’s hard to remember, but all that stuff occurred within this year. And I couldn’t be prouder,” says Sims.