When is a hospital emergency department closure not really a closure? According to IHA (Interior Health Authority) a closure is not a closure when services have been reduced to 'LLTO status.' In case you aren't aware, LLTO stands for Life, Limb, Threatened Organ, or in other words, real serious injuries.
Princeton General Hospital's ER has been on LLTO status off and on for many, many late night shifts over the past few months. There have also been complete 24-hours days where PGH ER was LLTO, which meant if you didn't have an emergency that wasn't serious enough to fall under the guidelines of LLTO you were, well, SOL.
To be fair here, IHA has implemented a complete LLTO protocol which at least puts a level of consistency into the mix. Here's some LLTO protocol information found online from an IHA webpage;
Extensive consultation with IH physicians raised several concerns that the new
LLTO Protocol is designed to manage, including:
• The referral process should be limited to a single point of entry
• The time physicians spend on the phone should decrease
• That regional and tertiary centres should accept LLTO patients based on
clinical need, not bed capacity
• That IH administrators are responsible and accountable on a 24/7
basis to critically manage life and limb access pressures
• That there should be seamless communication between agencies involved
in the transfer process
• That each call should be audited for performance (i.e., transport times)
and evidence of accountability through a quality assurance process
It sure makes it easy for IHA to 'weed out' those who keep clogging up
waiting rooms when all they have is the sniffles.
No comments:
Post a Comment