Ontario hospitals forced to delay, cancel surgeries amid staff shortages

The pandemic is once again putting pressure on Ontario’s health-care system but this time it is not a high rate of COVID-19 patients causing the strain.

Instead, it is the significant number of hospital workers who are reportedly off the job due to the virus that is forcing hospitals to reduce operations. Staff shortages are resulting in another round of delays to elective surgeries and routine procedures.

“COVID-19 infections in healthcare workers are as high as in the last Omicron wave,” reads key findings from Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table’s latest modelling.

“High infection rates combined with potentially high hospitalization rates will reduce Ontario’s ability to provide care for non COVID-19 patients.”

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Many hospitals are still not up to pre-pandemic surgery levels and are again delaying or cancelling non-emergency procedures. The Toronto Star is reporting 2,900 staff are off sick at the provinces 14 largest hospital systems.

“The pressures are less about how many patients are showing up and being admitted because of COVID, and more about how many of our staff are having to self-isolate because they themselves are either contracting the disease or at high-risk for developing the disease,” says Hamilton Health Sciences CEO Rob MacIsaac.

The high number of sick staff means longer hours and higher workloads for the healthy staff.

The province has attempted to address the nursing shortage by introducing a $5,000 retention bonus for eligible nurses.

“We have extended a $5,000 retention bonus to them, it’s $763 million ” said Health Minister Christine Elliott earlier this week. “We want to keep our nurses, we want to acknowledge and recognize the incredible work they have done.”

Bill 124, which caps public workers’ wages at 1 per cent over three years, has also been a point of contention between health care workers and the Ontario government. Nurses’ unions have repeatedly asked for the legislation to be repealed while saying the retention bonus is only a band-aid fix and not a real solution to fix the staffing crisis.

Head of the science table, Dr. Peter Juni said this week that wastewater data shows a possible peak amd the number of health-care workers testing positive for COVID-19 has plateaued. He says a jump in infections is expected following the recent holiday weekend, but it would likely be small.

The science table released new projections last week that said the sixth wave of COVID-19 had likely plateaued or started to decline, but there is “significant uncertainty” around the impact of case growth on the provincial health system and deaths. The panel noted that hospitalizations would likely continue to increase for some time.

With files from The Canadian Press