Article content continued

OFFLOAD HOURS (Any time greater than 30 minutes spent by a paramedic crew at the hospital ER is considered an offload delay) 2013: 5,921 2014: 6,019 2015: 5,017 2016: 7,437 2017: 10,800+

Even before that call for help, hospital officials had decided to take the unprecedented step of creating procedures to move patients into hallways to free up space in ERs, surgical recovery rooms and intensive care wards — the groundwork was laid in January with the new hallway protocol taking effect earlier this week.

“We have been working with chief Roberts (to) address their offloading concerns,” hospital vice president Julie Trpkovski told The Free Press.

Sometimes, demands on ERs become so high, with no spaces in wards to move patients, the LHSC has had little choice but to move nurses helping paramedics to treat trauma patients in emergency rooms, she said.

Those challenges have been made greater by the growing number of patients taken to hospitals in ambulances — there can be as many as 10 lined up but only room for five stretchers in the hallway leading to the ER, she said.

“Our volumes have definitely grown,” Trpkovski said.

A lack of hospital capacity to meet growing demands has become a system-wide problem, she said.

“It is a system-wide (problem),” she said.

Paramedics have called for officials to make those in the system more accountable for delays, meeting twice with the local health integration network. Asked this week by The Free Press about those efforts, an official at the network said there would be a response next week.