Day centre at Montreal General Hospital looking to help ease overcrowding in ERs

A year since the opening of the day centre here at the Montreal General Hospital, nearly 3,000 patients have been treated, freeing up more beds in ERs across several hospitals affiliated with the MUHC.

The initiative aims to solve overcrowding in emergency care.

Kenneth Squires is one of the patients and raves about the efficiency and care from the team.

“They see us coming in through the hallway and they’re ready for us like that: Boom,” he said.

“They’re very, very quick. In an emergency ward, it’s very noisy,” he added. “They have stretchers coming in and out, but being in here, it’s nice and calm and you can get your blood or whatever else they might be doing.”

Patients are referred from anywhere within the MUHC’s network.

“In total about 3,000 patients either coming from the ambulatory care, the early discharge from the inpatient units,” said Kelly Chavez, assistant nurse manager at the day centre. “All these patients, if they didn’t have the medical day hospital to come here, they would have ended up in the emergency.”

The day centre has seen 700 patients come from the intensive care unit.

It gives flexibility to those that need treatment but are well enough to go home after follow-ups, instead of being hospitalized for days on end.

Alana Hirschberg says she’s grateful for this freedom to come and go from the hospital three times a week.

“This was like really the best scenario for me,” she said. “I come in and I get all the tests I need. I get to see the doctors that they need to consult. I get my treatments, but I still get to have supper with my kids.”

The good news: the capacity and team at the day centre keep growing.

“We can see about 22 patients in a single day, which is a considerable increase, as we have also raised the number of nurses from one to six full-time nurses from Monday to Friday,” said Radia Boukheroufa, the manager at the day centre.

The day centre is the first of its kind – it’s the only one in Quebec that has a physician on staff to provide diagnosis, as well as investigate health issues.  

They primarily take care of non-urgent cases, where nurses can administer infusion therapy, blood tests and more.

“Because we have laboratory services and imaging on par with the emergency room, we can actually get those tests done the same day,” said Dr. Patrizia Zanelli, the medical director at the centre. “And we get the results, and then we can actually intervene and manage our patients as well.”

Boukheroufa says they offer a range of treatments and keep developing what they do.

“We’re also responding to requests from emergency and care units,” says Boukheroufa. “If there’s a treatment that we haven’t yet given, and the emergency unit asks us for it, we’ll train the team and start offering it.”

Quebec’s Health and Social Services Ministry told CityNews in a statement that day centres for outpatients exist across Quebec. Having seen the positive results at the MUHC, they encourage more initiatives like it to take place.

“I think this is just the beginning of something that can really make a difference into the flow of our healthcare system, especially here at the MUHC,” said Chavez.