Some hospitals of Canada are projected to face significant shortage of ICU beds

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Ottawa, Apr 12 (Canadian-Media): As the number of COVID-19 patients are expected to increase over the next few months, a team of health system researchers had predicted that some Canadian hospitals could face significant shortfalls of ICU beds, media reports said.

ICU beds. Image credit: Unsplash

The data also revealed the discrepancy of ICU requirement between different areas of the country showing some hospitals are better equipped to deal with an acute stress like COVID-19 than others.

Many hospitals across Canada had more than enough capacity, said the data, to handle COVID-19 patients, all except Ontario.

According to the data ten hospital regions in Ontario, eight in Quebec, three in Saskatchewan and two in Alberta and Manitoba would all face ICU bed capacity shortages. 

Broken down provincially, Ontario would face the greatest shortfall in capacity with projections that the province would need twice as many ICU beds.

And some hospitals across the country would have to triple their capacity for ICU beds in such a scenario.

But those issues could be mitigated by actions already being undertaken by health officials across the country, provincial health officials say. 

Those measures include, transferring patients to other regions. converting spaces within hospitals, or creating additional ICU capacity.

The ICU bed model builds on the Public Health Agency of Canada's latest projections, as well as Canadian Institute for Health Information's recent data with respect to regional hospital bed capacity. 

Members of the ICU bed capacity model project included research assistant Robert Redelmeier and Jose Figueroa, an assistant professor of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The model does not account for an unexpected infections increase which would impact regions differently over time and gathering of resource needs could be even greater sooner than expected.