Taking action to ensure timely, quality care

Ottawa, Oct. 7 – Happy Thanksgiving! In advance of a(nother) long weekend that is expected to be extremely busy, CHEO is announcing a series of measures to respond to the unprecedented pressures of recent months. We know that long wait times are challenging for everyone; that’s why we are throwing everything we have at delivering the safest care and the best possible experiences for patients and families who need us.  

Thanks to our incredibly dedicated team members:

• We are working to free-up medical professionals with critical care training to return to patient-facing needs. (Some medical staff work behind the scenes; we may be asking them to come back to the frontlines.)
• Staff from across the hospital are also pitching in, in frontline support roles, by taking on additional shifts on top of other responsibilities. (Some 250 “helpers” across the organization chipped in this way during the summer.)
• We are expanding staffing (including doubling our doctor coverage) at the Kids Come First and East Ottawa Kids clinics. (We are also working to expand clinic hours.)
• We are embedding specialized discharge planners within our clinical teams to ensure young patients get home sooner, safely.
• We are doing everything we can think of to reduce the length of time that children and families who come to our emergency department will have to wait.

Over the coming weeks, we will also:

• Add more than a dozen positions in the Emergency Department, including pre-triage rapid assessments and physician assistants. This is in addition to the 100 acute care positions we created in July and for which recruitment is almost complete.
• Improve the wait times modelling on our website so people can better know what to expect before visiting CHEO.
• Introduce new online tools so families can better navigate their care and access it more easily.
• Exhaust every possible option to make care faster and more accessible to all who need it.

“We know that people trust CHEO with their children’s care – often at the worst, most difficult moments of their lives,” said Alex Munter, CHEO President and CEO. “That is a trust we don’t take lightly and know we have to earn every single hour of every day. We are taking action on several fronts to ensure CHEO patients and families receive the timely, world-class care they expect and deserve.”

In recent months, CHEO – like health-care organizations everywhere – has faced challenges that we haven’t seen in our 48-year history. 

Like hospitals across Canada (and despite twice being named the best place to work in Canadian healthcare by Forbes Magazine), CHEO is experiencing acute staffing challenges and we are currently advertising for hundreds of positions on our website.

Some other CHEO-specific facts:

• Today, CHEO is at 124% occupancy in our in-patient medical units and all of our budgeted beds are full. Our intensive care unit has been in ‘life or limb’ status for much of the past two weeks. And our emergency department, which yesterday alone saw 61 more patients than it was built for (211 patients vs. 150), is experiencing hours-long waits for care.
• April to September 2022 has been the busiest six-month period EVER for our emergency department.
• Over the last few weeks, we’ve had many nights with more than a dozen patients admitted in the ED without an available bed upstairs, with many of these patients waiting more than 30 hours (some more than 48 hrs).
• Our mental health units have been frequently in ‘major surge,’ dealing with a youth mental health crisis exacerbated by the pandemic.
• Our operating rooms are working tirelessly to make ground on the growing number for children who are waiting for needed surgeries. Sadly, we have been forced to cancel scheduled surgeries due to the unavailability of beds. (None of these cancellations has been an urgent case; critically ill patients will always get the care they need. But each cancellation is very disruptive and distressing for families.)
• Not only are we busier, the patients we are seeing are sicker; our critical care units have been at or over capacity every day but one since Sept. 11.

“Never have we experienced a sustained surge like we have over the last six months,” said Munter. “When the need for urgent/emergent care escalates, kids who have been waiting – sometimes too long – for their care often are forced to wait even longer. It’s just not OK. It’s not sustainable. That’s why we are taking action on several fronts.”

We are able to act now thanks to a $1.2 million dollar infusion from Ontario Health and the support of CHEO Foundation donors. We will continue to work with government to secure funding to cover the full cost of these measures but will defer some clinical equipment purchases if necessary to hire these needed extra staff. (Ottawa’s ‘under 19’ population grew by 9% from 2016-2021, nine times the provincial rate.)

“We have a children’s health system that was not built to accommodate a simultaneous surge in demand and acuity and a decrease in access in other parts of the system. We look forward to working with the Ontario government on long-term solutions to deliver care to a growing number of kids and families across our region.”

To everyone coming to CHEO over the weeks and months ahead, thank you for your patience. We will always be available to you if or when you need us. This weekend and always, we are deeply grateful for the dedication and hard work of our staff, medical staff, learners and volunteers who work tirelessly 24/7/365. 

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