Ontario’s major hospitals are overcrowded, operating with 100 per cent of their acute care beds occupied, sometimes trying to squeeze in even more, creating potential hazards for patients and leading to inadequate care, according to documents obtained by the New Democratic Party.

The Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre calls the situation “Code Gridlock” – when there are not enough beds to accommodate all of the patients. According to the documents, released Monday by the Ontario NDP, occupancy has exceeded 100 per cent for two of four quarters in each of the past two years at the Thunder Bay facility.

At Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), for example, during one quarter in 2013-14 and one in 2014-15, the occupancy rate was above 100 per cent; at the London Health Sciences Centre – University Hospital site, there were 10 consecutive quarters where the occupancy rate exceeded 100 per cent.

The story is even worse at the Rouge Valley Health System – Ajax and Pickering site, where there was a preliminary occupancy rate of 118.5 per cent for the first quarter of 2015-16, according to the Ministry of Health documents obtained through a Freedom of Information request by the NDP.

Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath has been pushing the Wynne government for weeks over concerns about health care cuts – and was at it again during Question Period Monday, painting a grim picture of what goes on in the province’s hospitals as a consequence of those cuts.

“This Liberal government has forced many of our hospitals to operate at over 100 per cent capacity,” Ms. Horwath charged. “That means long wait times for patients in the [emergency room] because every bed in the hospital is already full. It makes it harder to control the spread of infection, and it puts pressure on cleaning staff. It means that patients end up being treated on stretchers in hallways because there is no room left in the hospital.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ontarios-major-hospitals-operating-over-capacity-documents-reveal/article30054790/