‘Looks like a natural disaster’: Saskatoon hospital overcapacity forces patient care into hallways

WATCH: A Saskatoon woman says she was shocked by what she saw inside the emergency department at Saskatoon's Royal University Hospital (RUH).

Lynn Harmon was shocked by what she saw inside the emergency department at Saskatoon’s Royal University Hospital (RUH).

“It literally looks like a natural disaster had just happened,” Harmon said.

Patients on stretchers lined the hallway with portable IV stands and bedside trays.

Last week, Harmon took her mother to RUH with stomach and chest pain — which doctors later determined was related to liver and kidney issues.

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“There was absolutely no privacy,” Harmon told CTV News.

Her mother had an electrocardiogram done in the hallway.

“People were walking by, and her chest was exposed,” Harmon said.

“My mom, who has a compromised immune system, was next to people who were supposedly there with viral infections.”

89 new beds not yet open

The crowding at RUH is due to a temporary surge in patients, according to John Ash, the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) vice-president of Integrated Saskatoon Health.

“More people were accessing the emergency department, and they were sicker, resulting in more people being admitted, which created more capacity challenges within our hospital system. As I said, there wasn’t any specific reason,” Ash told journalists during a Thursday afternoon news conference.

Ash said while hallway care is not the ideal environment, “our ultimate goal is to make sure that patients have timely access to our emergency departments, they’re not waiting for extended period times in the waiting room.”

He couldn’t say how many patients received care in hallways, but at the peak time 42 people were waiting for a bed.

In March, the province announced funding for 109 new acute care beds in Saskatoon.

So far, only 20 of those beds are open. Ash said he expects the other 89 will open “in the next number of months.”

Stroke patient spends 4 days in hospital hallway

Tim Lang said his mother, who had a stroke, spent four days in a hallway before she was moved to a room.

He said she spent about four days in the hallway before she was offered a room.

“The stench in that hallway was brutal,” Lang told CTV News.

“Somebody in the bed next to her got up and he literally peed on the floor.”

Within one hour, Lang said he counted people walk by his mother’s hallway bed 172 times.

“All I can say is, ‘Cross your fingers you don’t get sick and end up in the ER,’” he said.

“The nurses are doing the best they can with what they have, but the facility is broken. Totally broken. It’s totally overwhelmed, bursting at the seams.”