'All hands on deck' as CHEO brings in Red Cross amid respiratory viral crisis

Ontario government officials continued to insist Monday that the province had been prepared for the ongoing respiratory illness surge among children this fall, even as CHEO was preparing to bring in the Red Cross to support overwhelmed hospital staff.

In an unprecedented move, the Eastern Ontario children’s hospital asked the relief agency for help as it deals with more children severely ill with respiratory illness than it can cope with on its own.

“At CHEO right now, it is all hands on deck as we respond to this never-before-seen level of viral illness among babies and children,” said hospital president and CEO Alex Munter.

Eighteen Red Cross staff members will begin working overnight shifts at CHEO starting this week. The two teams of nine will work on alternating nights and serve as unit helpers throughout the hospital, freeing up CHEO staff who have taken time off from other jobs to assist. Munter said the hospital will bring in more Red Cross workers over the holiday period if needed.

Their presence will allow CHEO staff to “literally go back to their day jobs and take care of kids” in clinics and other parts of the hospital, lessening the impact of the current health crisis.

CHEO has also asked nurses and doctors from Roger Neilson House, a pediatric palliative care hospice, to help at the hospital. The assistance is not affecting the hospice’s core service, said executive director Megan Wright. CHEO has asked other health organizations for help with staffing, equipment and patient transfers.

Munter said staff shortages are “fundamentally a math problem” at CHEO right now. The children’s hospital has added so much capacity to cope with the surge in sick patients that the staffing gap “is so significant that we are grateful for the support from others.”

Munter said the ongoing crisis underscores that the hospital needs to be “right-sized” in order to properly serve children and their growing needs. Munter said he is in daily contact with provincial officials about the current situation and the hospital’s needs beyond.

During an unrelated news conference Monday, Premier Doug Ford thanked the Red Cross for “stepping up” to help and said he is in constant communication with CHEO. “We will be there for them,” he said. The province has expanded critical care capacity and intensive care beds at CHEO in recent weeks, among other actions.

“We are pouring money into health care and we are going to continue investing.”

Opposition politicians noted that the provincial government had underspent on health care by $859 million during the first half of this year, according to the Financial Accountability Office.

NDP Opposition Leader Peter Tabuns said there is a “massive disconnect” between what the government says about the health system and what is happening in children’s hospitals right now.

“The plain truth is that Doug Ford’s failure to invest in health-care workers and the health-care system has brought us to this crisis point,” said Green party Leader Mike Schreiner.

CHEO, like many children’s hospitals across North America, has been reeling from the impact of a triple-demic of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza and COVID-19. Children have been hit unusually hard by both RSV and flu this year, resulting in record numbers of severely ill babies and children needing to be hospitalized because they are having difficulty breathing.

Earlier this fall, the hospital’s chief of staff, Dr. Lindy Samson, said she had never seen anything like the severity of this surge and it scared her. She pleaded with people to begin wearing masks indoors. The hospital has been forced to cancel some surgeries and treatments.

RSV is now beginning to wane in Ottawa, but influenza continues to spike.

An Ottawa mother, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect her son’s privacy, said she was not surprised to hear the hospital had called in the Red Cross to help based on what she experienced in CHEO’s emergency department Friday night.

She brought in her 14-year-old son with an extremely high fever. After waiting close to seven hours, a non-medical hospital worker told parents like her who filled the waiting room that unless their child was under three months old or having seizures, they would be better off at home because the wait could be another 10 to 16 hours. That was at 1 a.m.

She said the worker told parents there was just one doctor and two nurses on duty at the time. The mother said she didn’t feel good about leaving, but went home.

“I think they were doing the best they could. I just think they were completely overwhelmed.”

She said she is “frustrated beyond words” that public health officials have had nothing to say about the crisis and (Premier Doug) Ford and (Health Minister Sylvia) Jones keep saying everyone is getting the health care that they need.

News that the children’s hospital had asked the Red Cross for help alarmed and angered some observers.

“Every one of us should be angry that one of Ontario’s largest children’s hospitals has had to call in the Red Cross to help with staffing. Every one of us should be demanding that our government immediately invest more resources into our healthcare system. Every one of us,” tweeted Dr. Naheed Dosani, a Toronto palliative care physician.

Meanwhile, Munter said CHEO opened in 1974 with 300 beds and has fewer than half that many now, although the population has more than doubled. During that time, medical advances and better public policies meant children were spending fewer nights in hospitals.

“The portion of health dollars spent on kids shrank — despite our growing population and despite huge increases in mental health issues, behavioural diagnoses, obesity and other emerging caseloads. In short, we outgrew our kids’ health system.”

1. Munter: CHEO crisis shows we must do better for children's health care

2. CHEO accepts non-clinical help from Canadian Red Cross as part of response to respiratory virus surge