NB Premier says treating patients in hospital ambulance bays ‘is not acceptable care’
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New Brunswick’s premier says treating hospital patients in ambulance bays is not acceptable, but the alternative is no care at all.
Health Minister John Dornan confirmed Thursday that a temporary unit has been in use for at least a year in the ambulance bay of Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital in Fredericton.
But conditions at the unit were exposed to the public on Wednesday, when Katrina Leckborg, a registered nurse who lives and works in Fredericton, posted an open letter to the prime minister on Facebook.
Lekborg said her 88-year-old grandmother was hospitalized this week with delirium and was taken by stretcher to an area called “MTU,” which stands for Medical Transition Unit.
A medical transition unit created from an ambulance bay at Dr. Everett Chalmers Hospital in Fredericton is representative of the strained health care system, according to the Prime Minister and Health Minister.
“It is not an entity,” Lekborg wrote. “This is legitimately a garage with curtains.”
“There’s no bathroom. No running water. No sink to wash hands. She eats inches away from the commode she uses to relieve herself. There’s no privacy, just a tattered curtain with holes. There are no doors. The lights are on constantly all day and all night. There are no windows, no way to tell the time of day.”
Lekborg did not respond to requests for an interview with CBC News.
Fredericton-Lincoln MLA and Green Party leader David Coon witnessed conditions firsthand while visiting a patient in the unit.
“It’s a terrible, terrible situation,” Coon said in an interview.
“And of course the hallway outside is filled with paramedics sitting with their patients, waiting to be taken off their hands…it’s like MASH”
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Premier Susan Holt also said it was “not acceptable care,” adding that she had been in contact with Lekborg after reading the letter.
“It’s very hard to say it’s better than nothing, because it’s terrible,” Holt said.
But if the units had not been used by Horizon, “people would have been out in the parking lot.”
Margaret Melanson, president and CEO of Horizon Health Network, confirmed that the medical transition unit has no running water or toilets and can hold 13 patients.
“The existence of this unit reflects the severe strain placed on our health care system,” Melanson said in an email.
He said the health authority faces “difficult choices” about where to care for people as the number of patients in hospital beds waiting for long-term care placement increases.
Those patients occupied 35 per cent of Fredericton hospital beds Thursday, Melanson said.
“If we could safely discharge and place these 121 patients in an appropriate setting — such as a long-term care facility — today, we would not need to use these overflow spaces,” he said.
“We have patients on stretchers in hallways, storage areas and dining areas. These conditions are not acceptable as a long-term reality.”
Lekborg’s letter called for immediate change, describing her grandmother in hospital as “confused, frightened and completely vulnerable”.
She said, “As a registered nurse, I was trained in the basic principles of safe, ethical and compassionate care. These conditions violate all of them.”
“This environment is unsafe, unethical, and unhealthy. It puts patients at increased risk of infection, injury, and cognitive decline. It is disorienting for a healthy person, let alone someone with dementia.”
Health Minister John Dornan also said the situation was unacceptable and his focus was to get as many patients out of hospitals and into community care as possible.
Dornan said he is not aware of any other hospitals in New Brunswick using ambulance bays to house patients.
