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After years of being squeezed by Ontario’s government, London’s largest hospital is so chronically short of funded beds it’s created rules for moving patients into hallways for treatment.

The new “hallway transfer protocol” will take effect May 1.

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“(Too often) there is a state of total congestion in our (emergency departments),” Julie Trpkovski, a vice president at London Health Sciences Centre, told The Free Press Friday.

The log-jam caused by a lack of staffed hospital beds is not limited to the ER; it’s also caused delays for patients who should be moved from critical-care units and those recovering from surgery, so the new protocol has created rules for each of the three for which patients should be moved to hallways and under which circumstances.

While it may seem shocking that the London hospital has been forced to make hallway medicine part of what it routinely does, other Ontario hospitals have been forces to do so too. “(London Health Sciences Centre) is not the only hospital (affected by gridlock). We’re seeing more and more of this because our system is stretched from a capacity perspective,” Trpkovski said.