Opinion: Prescription for Lachine Hospital

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In April, the Nationwide Meeting unanimously handed a decision guaranteeing Lachine Hospital as a full service neighborhood hospital with a 24/7 emergency room and ambulances. The decision additionally assured all providers, together with hospital and surgical, which incorporates the intensive care unit.

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Nonetheless, the following day, the McGill College Well being Centre, in saying the gradual reopening of the emergency room with ambulances, famous “the Intensive Care Unit won’t reopen. Protocols for transferring sufferers to different websites, which have been in place for over a yr, will stay in place.”

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And but, based on the newest scientific plans, from 2020, for which the Quebec authorities granted Lachine Hospital $220 million, a seven-bed ICU was to be included.

An ICU offers essential care, together with hemodynamic and respiratory monitoring, in addition to ongoing care after a affected person has been stabilized within the ER. Sufferers embody these having coronary heart assaults, extreme infections and strokes. A full-service ICU requires intensive care physicians, specifically skilled nurses and respiratory therapists.

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Lachine Hospital ceased having an ICU on the finish of 2020. Sufferers needing essential care had been adopted within the ER and had been cared for there. The duty of caring for critically unwell sufferers has fallen completely on ER physicians. This has created a heavy burden on them. They have to not solely stabilize these sufferers, but in addition monitor them and prepare for transfers to ICUs at different hospitals.

As a result of Lachine Hospital now lacks a full-service ICU, a brief answer should be quickly labored out to assist the ER physicians. A brief answer in preparation for a full-service ICU can be an intermediate care unit.

Research present intermediate care items are environment friendly each in price and the way they work.  The median variety of beds throughout worldwide research had been six. These items might be staffed by registered nurses licensed in superior cardiac life assist and don’t require inhalation therapists. Sufferers would come with these needing hemodynamics and respiratory monitoring — for secure coronary heart assaults, extreme infections and strokes, for instance. Quebec already has such items in some neighborhood hospitals.

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In the meantime, based on Radio-Canada, the Quebec authorities plans to hospitalize sufferers in non-public surgical clinics for as much as 72 hours for statement beginning this summer season. If Quebec is opening short-term keep items — in impact, intermediate care items — in non-public hospitals, why not a minimum of do the identical in a completely staffed public hospital?

Moreover, as reported within the Montreal Gazette, the MUHC is contemplating growing surgical procedures at Lachine Hospital to ease the backlogs.

Because the hospital prepares for the return of ambulance service and the reopening of beds for surgical procedures and hospitalizations, an intermediate care unit is an inexpensive short-term answer to offer ongoing monitoring and take care of sufferers. This will and must be rapidly carried out this summer season to stop unnecessary transfers of sufferers to different hospitals which can be already overrun.

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The MUHC should additionally ship a transparent message to the neighborhood that it understands the need of rapidly restoring a full-service ICU, starting with an intermediate care unit. This isn’t solely vital and justified for the total functioning of the hospital — together with a 24/7 emergency room with ambulances in addition to surgical and medical providers with hospitalizations — however it’s a part of the $220-million scientific modernization plan.

An intermediate care unit adopted by an intensive care unit can be a win-win to make sure the security and safety of sufferers and assist relieve the overstretched ERs and ICUs on the West Island and in all of Montreal.

Dr. Daniel Laliberté is the previous director of the emergency division and household drugs at Lachine Hospital. Dr. Paul Saba is the previous president of the council of physicians at Lachine Hospital and a well being care advocate.