Teens sent to adult ICUs as crisis grows at McMaster Children’s Hospital

Teens have been transferred to adult intensive care as McMaster Children's Hospital struggles to cope with an extraordinary surge" of sick kids.

The hospital on Main Street West has been strained for six months with demand reaching historic highs in the last two months.

The worsening crisis has seen increasing transfers of critically ill kids out of McMaster, including youth being sent to adult hospitals. Exact numbers of transfers and locations have not been provided by Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) despite repeated requests by The Spectator.

All of us are concerned about the ability of our front-line care teams to continue to meet these really unprecedented demands," hospital president Bruce Squires told The Spectator. We continue to experience this extraordinary surge in volumes ... and so that really is extraordinarily challenging for our teams to ensure that we're able to deliver the best quality of care in a timely manner."

With occupancy climbing to 135 per cent, McMaster will cut back planned surgeries that require a hospital stay to just five a week - one-third as many as the usual 15. The reduction starts Nov. 4 and is expected to last at least four weeks.

Squires called it an extremely difficult decision" to make mere weeks after he raised the alarm about 60 per cent of kids on the surgical wait list failing to get their surgery within the optimal window to ensure there are no lifelong consequences for development.

We were forced to take it because of this unprecedented occupancy levels in our critical care and inpatient areas," he said. It is a very difficult place to be whenever you defer any care for a child or youth. We'll continue to evaluate this on an ongoing basis and as soon as we're able to do so, we'll look to recommence as much as we can of that surgical activity."

Squires says all hospitals that provide pediatric care have been meeting with the Ministry of Health and the province's super agency, Ontario Health, to try to come up with solutions to the increasing pressure ahead of flu season and a forecast COVID wave.

He directed questions about whether help is coming and when to the ministry, which did not respond by deadline.

It's terrifying where we're headed," said Sandy Shaw, MPP for Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas. If the government doesn't act with the urgency that is required now, how bad does it have to get before they will do something?"

Shaw, who is NDP, called the situation an unfolding disaster" and called on the Conservative government to dip into $44 billion in unallocated contingency funds to shore up the health-care system. She also wants to see the repeal of Bill 124, which caps wages at one per cent a year for a three-year period.

Why is this government not addressing the human resource crisis in our hospitals," said Shaw. Bill 124 is a huge problem. People do not want to go to work when their wages have been frozen. People are burned out, they're feeling frustrated and they're feeling helpless in health care."

HHS said in October that McMaster had 425 job openings - 123 of them in nursing - over the past three months.

Our teams are very tired," said Squires. He added that the main reason most services are still running at McMaster is only because of the commitment and professionalism of our front-line health professionals."

However, staff are also falling ill to the same respiratory viruses that are partly causing the surge: flu, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and COVID.

We're experiencing a very significant surge in viral activity across the community," said Squires. That's driving much, much higher emergency room visits than we've ever experienced at this time of year and a much higher number of admissions."

He emphasized the really significant impact it's having on our ability to ensure care for the sickest children and youth."

Squires urged Hamiltonians to get their flu shot and stay up to date on COVID vaccines to help protect the precarious health-care system in the months ahead.

It's really difficult to know for sure what this is going to mean going forward," said Squires. There are many viruses at play and the situation is different with them coming together. Unfortunately, we don't yet know if we might be experiencing a peak or if we can expect these to continue to grow to what are normally higher levels in December, January and really the heart of the winter."

Squires said the surge is also a consequence of delayed care as backlogs have been growing throughout the two and a half years of pandemic. It's a vicious circle as the measures to cope with the surge will delay care even more.

McMaster Children's Hospital is one of five centres of excellence in Ontario for children's health and well-being and for them to be in crisis is shocking," said Shaw. They're over capacity, children are being transferred from one hospital to another, they are cancelling surgeries. This is not a one-time short-term crisis. This is every single day that this is happening."

Joanna Frketich is a health reporter at The Spectator. jfrketich@thespec.com