A Windsor family is angry with our health care system.
They say their loved one had to be transferred to Sarnia because there were no ICU beds available in Windsor.
They believe it's another sign of an under-funded system and they're calling on patients to put their foot down.
The Windsor-Essex Health Coalition held a news conference Wednesday out front of the Ouellette campus of Windsor Regional Hospital.
They say the Weston family's story is just another in a long line of chronic cuts to local health care that need to stop.
Chuck Weston's 68-year-old sister has been in and out of hospital for the last 18 months. She has pneumonia.
“I just pray that none of you people have to go through this, it’s an emotional rollercoaster,” says Weston.
Last Friday, Weston says the family was shocked to learn his sister was being transferred from her ICU bed in Windsor to one in Sarnia. Doctors told them she was the healthiest of the ICU patients to move.
“It was two hours driving there, but it’s more like 5-6 hours total for the patient because of getting prepped to go and from getting an ambulance ready,” says Weston.
Dr. Eli Malus, intensivist and respirologist, says these things don’t happen often - once a year or once every two years.
Malus says each hospital must have what’s called a surge capacity plan. Malus says its activated when the ICU gets to 110 per cent capacity, so that if they hit 115 per cent they make the difficult decision to transfer a patient somewhere else.
“Windsor Regional did a fantastic job of shifting resources between their ICUs, using other areas of the hospital that have Level 3 capacity, which is the ability to take care of these really sick patients because we have that plan,” says Malus. “The first part of the plan is to not transfer anybody, we make them stretch and stretch and work really hard.”
He says that’s why the patient was moved and it's not a decision they take lightly.
“The most important thing is that everybody who needs care, gets care and the reality is not all our critical care resources are centered in Windsor,” says Malus.
Weston was returned to Windsor over the weekend, once the ICU had a bed available, but members of the Windsor-Essex Health Coalition say it doesn't have to be this way.
The coalition says it is a result of a lack of government funding.
Windsor Regional did get a one per cent boost in provincial funding. But CEO David Musyj has repeatedly stated because Windsor's population isn't growing, neither will the hospitals funding, so they have to do more with less money, in some cases.
