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Life Flora coping adequately with Covid-19 cases

"The bed capacity situation across all of our hospitals is fluid and is being reassessed frequently."

A stressed and panicked public can be easily susceptible to misinformation and wild rumours.

Life Flora Hospital has reached out to squash any hearsay or gossip around the facility’s capacity and resources. Life Flora Hospital stressed that they are ready and able to admit Covid-19 and non-Covid-19 related patients.

“The bed capacity situation across all of our hospitals is fluid and is being reassessed frequently. 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,” stated General Manager of Emergency Medicine for the Life Healthcare Group, Dr Charl van Loggerenberg.

Despite the increasing number of infections, management are confident as they are receiving live data throughout the day to keep abreast of the situation. Determining capacity is not a straightforward process, as Dr Van Loggerenberg explained, “Determining capacity at hospitals is based on several factors, not only patient numbers. It is standard practice in all hospitals, outside of the Covid-19 crisis, to place certain areas of care under Temporary Capacity Divert (TCD).”

TCD is the process of advising emergency responders and ambulatory service of the best possible options for their patient. This is specific to when the level of severity of an illness of a patient cannot be met at that immediate time. This would be the case, for example, when a specialist is not immediately available to attend to the medical emergency.

“TCD relates to patient needs, and not only patient or bed numbers. This does not mean that there are no beds available at the hospital, but rather that the immediate care needed is not immediately available,” said Dr Van Loggerenberg.

“It would not be correct to say that hospitals are full and cannot accept admissions. 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. Should an EMS vehicle need to bring a patient with a brain injury to a hospital and the neurosurgeon on call is not available for immediate care, then all ‘neurosurgery’ medical emergency cases would be put on TCD and taken to the nearest facility until such time that the surgeon has capacity,” he explained.

“We appeal to members of the public to act responsibly when using social media and social messaging platforms about hospital capacity. The best place to get up to date information is to follow your local Life Healthcare hospital Facebook page, where official and important messages are posted in the interest of the hospital community and patients,” concluded Dr Van Loggerenberg.

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