Quebec hospital plan could see ‘harm-reduction approach’ taken to COVID-19
Global News
If the plan is fully implemented, then workers who have been exposed to or infected with the virus would continue working rather than isolating.
The latest surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations is showing signs of subsiding, Quebec Health Minister Christian Dubé said Tuesday, shortly before officials outlined a contingency plan to keep overwhelmed hospitals operating.
That plan could see hospitals place less effort into trying to keep COVID-19 infections out of their facilities and instead adopt a “harm-reduction approach” to the spread of the virus, Marie-Eve Bouthillier, chair of the province’s COVID-19 ethics committee, told reporters at a technical briefing Tuesday afternoon.
If the plan is fully implemented, then workers who have been exposed to or infected with the virus would continue working rather than isolating. As well, family members of patients would be asked to provide basic care for their relatives so health-care workers could focus on clinical tasks.
Quebec hospitals would also reduce the minimum level of care offered, Bouthillier said. Hospitals, she added, would “care for more people at a lower level, rather than give fewer people an optimal level of care, so we can ensure that no one finds themselves without care.”
The contingency plan would also see hospitals look for ways to discharge people sooner and provide more home care.
Dr. Duong Hoang, president of Quebec’s association of internal medicine specialists and one of the authors of the contingency plan, said he hopes the most serious parts of the plan won’t be put into practice.
“Decreasing the level of care to be able to care for a larger number of patients isn’t something we learned in medical school, but it’s something that could be necessary if we get there,” he told reporters.
Dr. Lucie Poitras, one of Quebec’s top hospital officials, said she wouldn’t speculate on the odds that the plan would be implemented.