CORNWALL, Ontario – The Cornwall Community Hospital (CCH) has expanded its Critical Care Bed and ventilator capacity in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The CCH has added an additional 17 Critical Care Beds to their original capacity of 11 and have added eight ventilators to their original stock of five.
This is a part of a province wide initiative by the provincial government to increase hospital capacity.
Provincially, Ontario has added 1,035 acute care beds and 1,492 critical care beds, while also taking steps to ensure that hospitals are properly staffed.
Additionally, the province has partnered with hospitals to further increase critical care and acute care bed capacity. The province already has 3,504 critical care beds, up from 1,319 when the pandemic started and hoped to add another 4,205 acute care beds to the existing stock of 20,354 by the end of April.
“The province continues to focus on what resources will be needed to further enhance capacity quickly, if the need arises,” said Stormont, Dundas, and South Glengarry MPP Jim McDonell. “Hospitals have identified additional opportunities to add new beds, including through the use of field hospitals, conference centres, school locations and more. Sites are ready to open based on the needs of the community.”
With their increased Critical Care Bed capacity the CCH has opened a COVID-19 Critical Care Unit in their ambulatory clinic area on Level 1.
“The potential expansion of additional acute care beds has also been part of our pandemic planning initiatives,” said Jeanette Despatie, President and CEO of the CCH. “We have identified a number of potential inpatient spaces, that would expand our bed capacity to more than double our current census. These spaces include areas in the hospital like Day Surgery, Diagnostics, and the auditorium (which was formerly emergency department space).”
Despatie went on to explain that staff from across the hospital were working to ensure that there were enough supplies, equipment and training to adequately operate these spaces.
“While we continue to work on plans to expand our capacity to care for an increase in COVID-19 patients; at the same time we know we must ensure that other emergent patient needs are met as well,” Despatie concluded.
