ICU report should not have negative impact on Yarmouth Hospital

By Michael Gorman

THE VANGUARD

NovaNewsNow.com

Recommendations based on a review of intensive care units (ICU) in the province should not impact the level of service patients in Yarmouth receive. That's the message from the spokesman for the South West District Health Authority.

In a recent release from the provincial NDP, party leader Darrell Dexter expresses concern over what he says are the province's plans to downgrade many ICUs in the province to level three status.

But Fraser Mooney Jr. with South West Health said the proposal isn't really a downgrade because such classifications never existed prior to the ICU review.

"It's a new classification system that has been proposed in this report," he said. "We were never any level previous to this."

Mooney said according to the report, level one ICUs would refer to the IWK and QEII Health Sciences Centre. Level two would be larger hospitals that would see more complicated cases and level three would be the remaining hospitals in the province that need to transfer patients from time to time depending on the scope of a case.

"It's more about the level of service that's available in each ICU unit," he said. "Based on what we've read so far and our interpretation of the report, we don't really expect that services (in Yarmouth) will change. I think the report kind of alludes to the fact that most ICUs in Nova Scotia are delivering the kind of services that they're best equipped to deliver and that would include us."

Mooney said ICU staff at the Yarmouth Hospital participated in the study. He said staff is still looking over the report to see just what it could mean for the area.

"From what we understand from the Department of Health is that they're still looking for feedback on the report, as well. So no concrete decisions have been made as to going forward with recommendations."

Mooney said it is his understanding that the province would make their next move on the report sometime in the fall.