A new offload room Cape Breton hospital helping clear-up the backlog of ambulances

New offload room in hospital help with wait times A new offload room in the Cape Breton Regional Hospital in Sydney is helping clear up wait times.

Ambulances waiting outside the island's largest hospital is a common sight.

Line-ups and long wait-times for paramedics has been the norm, but that is changing, at least in Sydney.

“It's working. It's not perfect because the demand is so high, but it is keeping our heads above water,” said IUOE Local 727 business manager Kevin MacMullin.

As part of a new redevelopment project at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital, Nova Scotia Health says there will be more patient care areas that are designed to be flexible to future changes in the ER, including an offload room to help keep ambulances on the road and ready to respond.

“It seems to work quite well. It's a four bed space that was an overflow room before that, and allows paramedics to keep an eye on four sick patients, and that gets ambulances back on the road,” said Dr. Margaret Fraser, Cape Breton physician.

The space was converted about a year ago and there's currently no other offload rooms like it in the province.

The Union representing paramedics would like to see more added, especially at regional facilities.

“If you had the QE2 and you had a room and had paramedics who were able to look after patients with the right equipment and guidelines and access to physicians in case they need them, I think it would work a whole lot better for us,” said MacMullin.

MacMullin says paramedics are still leaving Nova Scotia for better wages and benefits, leaving some areas short staffed.

In hospitals, the problem is the lack of beds available.

“If we've got 20 admitted patients in our 28 bed emergency department, then you can do the math, we're now an 8 bed emergency department in a 20 bed ward. And that's when you get people stuck in hallways,” said Fraser

Fraser says the province is doing their best and applauds some changes made, but more bed capacity is needed to help in other areas, including patients being offloaded.

For the latest Nova Scotia news, visit our dedicated provincial page.