Regina Pasqua Hospital ER faces bottleneck for beds in other units

Regina’s Pasqua hospital is struggling to find beds for all the patients who have come through the emergency room.

The facility is in code burgundy meaning patients ready to be discharged from the ER are stuck waiting for beds to become available in other units. That creates a bottleneck as new patients arrive for treatment in the ER.

Right now 17 patients are waiting to be moved, six of them as early as Tuesday.

The code burgundy situation is only slightly better at the General Hospital with three patients waiting.

While this issue is something the Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region (RQHR) is used to dealing with, John Ash with the health region maintains they try to mitigate the situation while trying to keep patients comfortable.

“We ensure the emergency department has appropriate internal flow so that patients can get the safe care that they need while those patients waiting for an inpatient bed, kind of are removed from the chaotic environment of the emergency department while they wait,” Ash explained.

 “Patients are in an appropriate area where there’s curtains and a stretcher and all the necessary equipment required for their care.”