The Hanover and District Hospital is close to finalizing its Critical Care Emergency Plan.
The provincially mandated plan outlines how the Hospital will handle a 15 per cent spike in critical admissions in the event of an emergency, disaster or epidemic.
Vice President of Patient Care Services Reta Sproule says the Hospital must be able to prove that it can cope with spikes in demand for critical care services over a very short period of time.
Everything from the number of isolation beds and ventilators to medical resources and staffing will be taken into an account in the plan.
Sproule says the Hanover and District Hospital can’t handle anything over a 15 per cent spike in critical admissions.
She says anything over that amount will require help from either the Local Health Integrated Health Services or the province.
Hospitals across the province have until March to have their Critical Care plan complete and submitted to the Ministry of Health for approval.
This will enable the province to determine exactly what each hospital is capable of handling during a crisis.