Congestion and overflow at the Royal University Hospital will soon see some help in the form of new beds that will open in early March. Thirty six additional beds will be available at the RUH, the beds which will be used for patients admitted from the emergency department will expand the total to 48 overflow beds.
Health Minister Jim Reiter, shared that he believes investing into the beds will help to meet the urgent care needs of residents. “This is one of the opportunities we’re going to have to start to ease that congestion, it’s one of many solutions that we’re going to be looking at, and it’s been in the works for some time now. So you can imagine I’m pretty excited to see it come to fruition.” Reiter added that the start up costs for the new beds, which previously housed maternal care patients, at 1.7 million dollars. With the cost to run the new beds at 8 million annually, accounting for new staff that will need to be hired to maintain it.
Norma Noesgaard, manager for the new unit says the former postpartum unit will be looking after general medicine patients.”Those patients are really a broad spectrum, we take care of most illnesses that are not included in surgery. We take things like people with diabetes, people with asthma, with any breathing problems, cancer at some points.” She added that a big advantage to the new unit will be the space available to doctors and nurses to treat their patients.
