Bluewater Health is accepting patients from outside the area to help other hospitals struggling to keep up with surging COVID-19 cases in pandemic hotspots.
Four hospitals in the Erie St. Clair region, including Bluewater Health, have been asked to collectively accept two ward/medical patients a day and also independently take ICU patients as demand increases.
Communications Chief Julia Oosterman said since Monday, the hospital has taken two COVID-positive patients from outside Lambton.
"It sounds much more dramatic than it really is because candidly, we do kind of bed-sharing all the time," said Oosterman. "If Windsor is full, we'll take patients, if Chatham doesn't have space we'll take their patients or vice-versa, this is relatively common actually. I think what's important here is that we are trying to look at this as a team Ontario approach, versus just a local approach."
Oosterman said there's a total of eight COVID-positive patients at the Sarnia hospital, two in the ICU, and one on a ventilator. She said at this point in time, the hospital is managing well.
"And that's really the name of the game here, is making sure as many hospitals as possible can manage well and not have a few hospitals in the GTA provide sub-optimal care because they're simply overwhelmed," she said. "We simply can't let that happen. It's not who we are as Canadians, especially not who we are as Ontarians, we need to shoulder and share the burden."
Oosterman said, earlier this month, the Ontario government asked all hospitals to ramp down and postpone some elective surgeries and procedures to create capacity for an influx of ICU patients across the province.
She said their ICU capacity right now is well within the limits of what they can handle, and there's no added pressure on staff.