East hospital denies Covid-19 bed shortage
“Contrary to rumours on social media, no Life Healthcare Hospitals are closed and all are generally ready and able to admit Covid-19 patients.”
A private hospital in the east of Pretoria dismissed claims that it did not have enough beds for Covid-19 patients as “fake news”.
“Contrary to rumours on social media, no Life Healthcare Hospitals are closed and all are generally ready and able to admit Covid-19 patients,” said spokesperson Tanya Bennets.
This after the Life Wilgers hospital was listed among several other hospitals in the province as being allegedly no longer able to accept Covid-19 patients due to dedicated wards/ICUs being full in a social media thread.
List of hospitals that cannot accept anymore COVID-positive patients as their COVID wards/ICU's are full:
[Thread]— Official COVID-19 SA page (@covid_sa) July 5, 2020
CMAH Jhb Gen
Netcare Krugersdorp
Life Wilgers
Netcare Linmed
Life Roseacres
Netcare Pinehaven
Netcare Parklane
Lenmed Ahmed Kathrada
Netcare Unitas
Netcare Mulbarton
Netcare Garden City
Netcare Linksfield
Netcare Milpark
Netcare Olivedale
Mediclinic Midstream
Netcare Union— Official COVID-19 SA page (@covid_sa) July 5, 2020
“The bed capacity situation across all of our hospitals is fluid and is being reassessed frequently,” Life Healthcare group emergency medicine general manager Dr Charl van Loggerenburg said.
“Our hospital management teams remain in constant contact with one another, their doctors and other healthcare professionals to ensure that additional beds are made available should this be required.”
The hospital group continued to say all of their hospitals had a Doctor Covid Committee.
The committee works closely with hospital management in daily clinical decisions which affect patients, staff and doctors.
Life Healthcare further said there were daily operational briefings and live data to keep all of their management teams appraised with the status of facilities.
“We want to assure the public that any individual with an emergency must go directly to their closest emergency room where they will be treated,” Van Loggerenberg said.
“It is important for us to explain that determining capacity at hospitals is based on several factors, not only patient numbers [and] it is standard practice in all hospitals, outside of the Covid-19 crisis, to place certain areas of care under temporary capacity divert.”
Temporary capacity divert was said to have been the process of advising emergency medical or ambulatory services of the best possible options for their patients.
“This is specific to when the level of acuity (severity of and illness) of a patient cannot be met at that immediate time,” the hospital group said.
Van Loggerenberg cautioned against the spreading of false news on social media and called on the community to use it responsibly.
“We appeal to members of the public to act responsibly when using social media and social messaging platforms about hospital capacity,” he said.
“The best place to get accurate and up-to-date information is through following our hospital group’s social media pages,” he added.
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