Triaging has had very unfortunate repercussions. It's crucial to ensure the continuity of hospital activities. We have to find a way to make sure patients are moved to appropriate settings after their hospital stay. Patients who are recovering from COVID‑19 should not remain in hospital. All needs that can be met outside the hospital should be. For instance, colonoscopies and knee and hip surgeries can be performed at specialized medical clinics. Certain activities can be performed in other settings to free up hospital resources for patients who genuinely require hospital care.
Without question, we must avoid triaging. We've learned a lot from the pandemic, in particular when it comes to the importance of having a sufficient supply of masks and gowns. The experts have been warning us for years. They knew an epidemic or pandemic was coming eventually, but we didn't listen.
Acquiring a supply of equipment is expensive, but had we been better equipped, we could have continued to perform hospital activities and avoided the consequences of triaging.
Nevertheless, what's done is done. Now we need to work hard on finding the solutions to fix the problem, and I think they are out there. We need to rely on local solutions. Introducing a one-size-fits-all or top-down approach is always very problematic. Local teams have the capacity to be innovative; they know the care settings and they know the needs. I think it's really important to decentralize care management if we want to maximize hospital performance and avoid having to triage patients.