It’s not a situation unique to St. Thomas Elgin General Hospital (STEGH) as facilities across the province are grappling with staffing challenges, inpatient overcapacity and stressed emergency departments.
All of which is creating capacity challenges which ultimately impact those requiring emergency care.
In an interview with Karen Davies, STEGH president and CEO, on Thursday (June 30), she confided that the hospital is dealing with a more than 30 percent increase in ER visits.
“In March of this year, we were seeing about 900 patients a week and now we’re seeing over 1,200 patients.
“And so the impact in our emergency department and also our inpatient side where we added 22 new beds in the early days of the pandemic.
“All 22 of those beds are full.”
Tag Archives: Elgin OPP
Lack of police communication cited in acquittal of Aylmer Express journalists charged with obstruction
Little did a father-and-son team of journalists realize attempting to communicate to their readers the details at a possible crime scene would haunt their lives for an agonizing 16 months – and possibly impact them forever – due to a lack of communication on the part of police.
On June 24 of last year, Aylmer Express publisher John Hueston and his son Brett navigated around a road-closed barrier on Springfield Road at Nova Scotia Line in Malahide in an attempt to gather details relating to information received via an Elgin OPP media release of a car driven over the cliff edge and into Lake Erie the previous day.
As they headed down the short stretch of road near to where emergency workers were preparing to lift the vehicle – with a deceased person inside – out of the water, they were intercepted and a tense exchange followed between members of the Elgin OPP and the Huestons.
Roundtable on rural poverty: Is the province out of touch?
