Island’s health-care backlog improving, but hospitals still over capacity, says Health P.E.I.

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Despite efforts to reduce a backlog, Prince Edward Island’s health authority says the province’s hospitals are still over capacity. 

“We consider the level that we’re in to still be a Level 4, which we have been in since early January,” said Corinne Rowswell, chief operating officer for Health P.E.I. 

Although pressures have eased because of improved patient flow and increased capacity, Rowswell said, there are still more people in the province’s hospitals than there are spaces allocated for them.

Health P.E.I. manages the number of people moving through the system on a daily basis while also working on longer-term capacity building solutions, she said. 

“What we’re trying to do is ensure that we have no service disruption, and so far we have been able to mitigate that.”

Corinne Rowswell, Health P.E.I.’s chief operating officer, says the health authority is focused on the keeping up the measures it’s put in place to reduce capacity in hospitals. (Steve Bruce/CBC)

Luckily for the Island’s health-care system, acute care wasn’t as significantly impacted by the winter respiratory illness season as it has been in years past, said Rowswell. 

But with a growing — and aging — population, the ability to keep up pace with how quickly capacity is needed is a challenge, she said. 

“The periods of overcapacity are prolonged, and we rarely get that down to where we have a lot of empty beds — usually there’s somebody waiting for them,” Rowswell said. 

She said Health P.E.I.’s goal is to keep people out of the emergency department when possible, but as more people make their way to the Island during the summer tourism season, demand for health-care services is expected to increase. 

“We do know and we do track how many patients from out of province get admitted to our hospitals,” she said.

“It’s a relatively low number, but the visits to the emergency department definitely increase in the summer.”