Last year, Brampton Civic Hospital had 4,352 hallway patients — and some of them waited nearly four days before they were admitted to a conventional room, according to a memo written by the health system's former CEO.

The memo was obtained by the Ontario NDP through a Freedom of Information request and distributed to the press gallery.

In the July 20 memo, Joanne Flewwelling, who was then the interim president and CEO of the William Osler Health System, described the "capacity and access pressure" the health system was facing, and requested $30.2 million in funding to meet the "service gap."

Flewwelling reported the number of "hallway patients" at Brampton Civic Hospital increased 88 per cent from three years earlier, and totalled 4,352 in the 2016-17 fiscal year. These patients experienced days-long stays on hallway beds, with the 90th percentile hallway wait ranging from 40 hours to nearly 70.

"In general, there were 33 admitted patients waiting for a bed daily," she wrote. "Hallway patients experience excessive noise and reduced privacy, which negatively affects their overall patient experience and quality of care, and may extend their length of stay."

She reported a high volume of emergency department patients at Brampton Civic Hospital — 138,000 visits in the 2016-17 fiscal year — with high-acuity problems, adding that the emergency department was built to serve only 90,000 annual visits.

Flewwelling wrote that the new nearby Peel Memorial Hospital Urgent Care Centre had not alleviated the pressures on the civic hospital. It was built to serve low-acuity patients, and opened earlier this year. But Flewwelling wrote that it was increasingly transferring high-acuity patients back to the civic hospital to be admitted, adding to the in-patient backlogs.

"Code Gridlock, a strategy used to manage capacity, was declared eight (8) times between January to April 2017, and lasted for 65 days in total. During these times of surge, patients may stay in the ED up to four (4) days waiting for a bed (particularly those with isolation needs)," she wrote.

When NDP Leader Andrea Horwath raised the memo in question period on Tuesday, Health Minister Eric Hoskins responded by giving information about the $140 million the government has committed to spending this year for 2,000 extra health-care beds — 1,200 are hospital beds, most of the remainder are for transitional care — until the end of the fiscal year. Six of those beds are going to Brampton Civic Hospital, with 82 going to the Central West Local Health Integration Network as a whole.

"The premier’s offer of a few temporary beds falls very short, far short of what is actually needed. It shows that they just don’t get it and they just don’t care," Horwath shot back in question period. "After all, what kind of leader could know that 4,352 people are being treated in Brampton’s hospital hallways and do very little, do nothing but offer six beds to try to fix it?"

Hoskins said that 31 more beds in the Central West LHIN have been allocated to a specific health-care institution yet, but help will ease the overcrowding.

"We’ll be looking to see where those capacity challenges are, where growth is highest, and allocate accordingly," he told the legislature..

Across the province, about 500 of the 2,000 beds weren't yet allocated when the government announced the funding for them last week.

Hoskins said he's working with the Ontario Hospital Association and hospitals on how to allocate the remaining beds. The plan was to immediately open those that were readily available, and then to continue to work with hospitals to open the beds that will require more time.

However, he could not give any reasons to why some of the yet-to-be-allocated beds will take longer to open than those that were named at the funding announcement last week, but said it's important they open by the end of the calendar year.

Parties spar over memo about Brampton hospital’s 4,352 hallway patients

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