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Patients placed in hallway pods as hospital deals with overcrowding in Mississauga
Posted: November 27, 2024
(November 26, 2024) By: Karen Longwell, Insauga
A recent post on social media highlights the issue of overcrowding as patients are in makeshift hallway pods in a Mississauga hospital.
Overcrowding is familiar to anyone who has visited Credit Valley Hospital recently. A post on Reddit shows a patient pod in the hallway. The poster said their father spent about three days shuffled from pod to pod in the hallways because no rooms were available.
“The entire time he was on a stretcher,” the poster said. “He finally did get a semi private room when we begged them (paid out of pocket for it).”
Attempts to contact the author of the Reddit post were not immediately returned.
“The hospital is in shambles, severely understaffed and overrun with patients,” the post said. “There are patient beds lined up in the hallway separated by a makeshift curtain or those separators.”
There are three to four patients in each hallway on every floor in every unit, the poster said.
“Most of the patients aren’t even in actual beds but rather stretchers, which are super uncomfortable.”
The hospital has acknowledged the issue in the past. In October, Trillium Health Partners president and CEO Karli Farrow told Mississauga council members that 118 patients were “receiving care in the hallways” due to a lack of beds in Mississauga hospitals.
THP is the umbrella organization that oversees Mississauga Hospital and Credit Valley Hospital in addition to the Queensway Health Centre on the Etobicoke-Mississauga border.
In a statement, THP told INsauga.com that they “recognize how challenging and emotional it can be for families navigating the health care system, particularly during times of unprecedented demand.”
Trillium Health’s network is one of the largest and fastest-growing hospital networks in Canada with over 1.7 million patient visits and 225,000 emergency department visits last year.
The network is “navigating an extraordinary demand for health care,” the statement reads. “Each day, our dedicated teams work with courage, compassion, and excellence to care for our community while striving to build a healthier future.”
There has been an increase in the number of people visiting the emergency departments at both the Credit Valley and Mississauga Hospital recently, the statement reads. At this time of year more people require inpatient care, partially due to the seasonal increase in respiratory illnesses, among other reasons, the spokesperson said.
But many people indicate the issue is ongoing and blame the overcrowding on a lack of funding from the provincial government.
“The government needs to step up and fix this problem,” one person wrote on Reddit. “There are more people that need help especially with the aging population and this is only going to get worse.”
“The Ford Government is causing this situation! They intend to privitize our health system,” another person said.
While organizations such as the Ontario Health Coalition warn of privatization and hospital cuts under the Ford government, particularly in rural Ontario, the government said they have increased funding.
A spokesperson for Sylvia Jones, the Ontario Minister of Health, told INsauga.com the provincial government “has made record investments” in the health-care system.
The government allocated over $85 billion in health care this year including a four per cent increase for the hospital sector for two years in a row and over $228 million this year to support crucial upgrades and modernization at hospitals in Ontario, Hannah Jensen, director of communications for the health minister told INsauga.com.
“We are building on the over 3,500 beds our government has added across the province since 2020, more beds than the Liberals built in 14 years, by getting shovels in the ground for over 50 hospital development projects across the province to provide more people with the right care, in the right place,” Jansen said.
Jansen pointed to funding for the new Peter Gilgan Mississauga Hospital and the redeveloped Queensway Health Centre in Etobicoke. More than 600 hospital beds will be added, Jansen said.
The new hospital “will be three times the size and transform care delivery with advanced technology, better integration, and a renewed focus on treating the whole person,” Trillium Health Partners said in the statement.
The Peter Gilgan Mississauga Hospital is being built on the same site as the Mississauga Hospital at Hurontario Street and The Queensway.
If everything goes according to schedule, the new hospital should open in 2033.
In the meantime, Trillium Health Partners said they are “using every available space within the hospital to care for our patients.”
They have added more than 200 beds since 2018 and built partnerships, new processes and technology to transition patients out of hospital to home or community care as soon as they’re ready, a THP spokesperson said.
THP has expanded THP@Home, which transitions patients from hospital to home. This program provides proactive services to patients in the community to prevent them from needing hospital care, THP said.
They are also working with organizations such as Partners Community Health and LOFT Community Services to provide specialized care in long-term care and supportive housing for complex patients.
All inpatient rehabilitation services are now at a designated space at the University Health Network Reactivation Care Centre.
Digital and AI tools are being used to improve hospital operations by optimizing discharge planning and improving workflow.
The Urgent Care Centre at the Queensway Health Centre also reopened last year to support the community with non-urgent illnesses and injuries.
