Thousands of patients are hospitalized in Royal Columbian Hospital and Eagle Ridge Hospital each year, and new data shows births and heart problems are among the most frequent reasons for hospital stays.
According to the Canadian Health Institute for Health Information, the largest number of hospitalizations are for having babies.
But if if you’re a new mom, you won’t be staying long in hospital, the CIHI stats show.
Gone are the days when hospitals were like hotels for new moms, where women were waited on hand and foot for up to a week after giving birth.
Now the length of stay for moms giving birth is 2.4 days, according to the CIHI stats for 2017/’18.
But their stay could be even shorter if there are no complications and breastfeeding is going well.
“As long as the mother and baby have been assessed and are safe to return home, some women go home after six or 12 hours while others will stay longer,” a Fraser Health spokesperson noted in a statement.
Mothers are assessed using the Parental Services BC guidelines as to whether they and baby can go home. To ensure things go well, they will be connected to resources in the community, including breastfeeding support from the public health team.
The RCH maternity ward is a busy place, with 2,981 hospitalizations for giving birth reported in 2017/’18, according to the institute.
That was the largest number of hospitalizations of any category for RCH.
In second place that year was ischaemic (coronary) heart disease, with 719 hospitalizations, followed by acute myocardial infarction (heart attack) at 706 hospitalizations, cerebral infarction (a blockage in the brain) at 428, and mood affective disorders at 423.
Meanwhile at Eagle Ridge Hospital in Port Moody, rehabilitation care was the number one reason for hospitalization in 2017/’18, with 278 patient visits, with the length of stay for rehabilitation at 32.9 days.
Those numbers are likely to change however, as the rehabilitation services at ERH moved to Queen’s Park Care Centre last year with the goal of creating a centre of excellence.
This new centre in New Westminster provides specialized, population-based rehabilitation care for stroke, brain injury, and people with Multiple Sclerosis or Parkinson’s Disease, hip fractures or amputations.
Eagle Ridge Hospital is now home to the Patient Assessment and Transition to Home (PATH) unit, which relocated from Queens Park and provides supports to patients who are seniors.
Other main reasons for hospital stays at ERH were COPD and bronchitis, with 244 hospitalizations, pneumonia at 188 hospitalizations, heart failure at 174 hospitalizations and paralytic ileum and intestinal obstruction without hernia at 152 hospitalizations.
The length of stay for these hospitalizations ranged from 10.9 for heart failure to 5.1 days for paralytic ileus and intestinal obstruction without hernia.
ERH is also undergoing a $27.6 million expansion of the emergency department to double the number of treatment spaces from 19 to 39. Construction is expected to be complete in late 2020.
