The great bureaucratic and administrative health care gamble of the last couple of years bears its ugly fruit. They were warned that this was going to be the inevitable outcome. They didn’t listen. And they still think they were right.
In the emergency department of Toronto’s Michael Garron Hospital more than 300 people a day seek medical help, an increase of 40 to 50 per cent from pre-pandemic times.
At St. Michael’s Hospital, the emergency department is seeing patients who are much sicker than those who sought care before COVID-19.
The result is that 3,000 more patients were admitted to the hospital in the last year compared to the year before COVID-19 hit.
The demand for beds is occurring at the same time as a critical shortage of registered nurses and a patient can’t be moved to a bed unless there’s a nurse that can take care of that patient. It’s a problem Snider said isn’t unique to any one institution.
