Pembroke Regional Hospital ready to lend help to Ottawa’s hospitals to alleviate COVID-19 pressure

As COVID-19 indicators continue to rise rapidly in Ottawa, other less affected health regions are looking to lend a helping hand.

According to Dr. Thomas Hurley, chief of staff at the Pembroke Regional Hospital, they’re looking to help take some of the pressure off at the Ottawa Hospital and its COVID-19 patients.

This could mean taking in regular patients to limit the risk of the virus spreading into different hospitals wards, taking acute COVID-19 patients or even critical care patients.

“There’s a few different ways we can help. One way is we can take acute care COVID patients from Ottawa into our facility,” Hurley explained. “Another way that we might be able to help is take in come critical care patients. Although we have a nine-bed ICU — we don’t have any COVID patients there now. So, we have to work with the region to decide where we can place COVID patients in our facility.”

Hurley said it is a regional approach, however. He added that the Queensway Carleton hospital is much closer to Pembroke, so they could help free up some of the beds in that hospital and, in turn, the QCH can help the Ottawa Hospital free up beds.

In the end, he said, it is a regional incident management team that makes the final decisions, but the hospital is looking to help in any way it can.