January 2, 2022 – St. John’s, NL: Eastern Health advises the public of temporary changes to services for health-care facilities in the city and in rural areas the region. Effective January 4, 2022, Eastern Health will focus on urgent and emergent acute services at health-care sites to enable resources to be redeployed to assist with the COVID-19 pandemic response.
Urgent and emergent appointments will continue to proceed in the following areas: Adult Outpatient Clinics, Regional Medicine Program, Children and Women’s Health, and Rehabilitation, Palliative Care and Geriatric Medicine. Unless otherwise stated below, only those patients whose appointments are going ahead will be contacted. If you have not been contacted, your appointment is cancelled.
Regional Surgical Services
- Urgent and emergent, cardiac and cancer surgeries are proceeding. Patients whose procedures are going ahead will be contacted.
Medical Imaging
- The Medical Imaging Program will be performing exams on a priority basis. Patients will be contacted only if their appointment has been cancelled for MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), CT scan (Computed Tomography), Ultrasound, Mammography, X-ray, Nuclear Medicine, PET scan (Positron Emission Tomography) and BMD (bone mineral densitometry).
Children and Women’s Health
- All Maternal Fetal Assessment Unit (MFAU) and prenatal appointments will continue.
- For all other appointments, only those patients whose appointment is going ahead will be contacted to confirm. If you have not been contacted your appointment is cancelled.
Provincial Cancer Care Program
- All radiation therapy and chemotherapy appointments will proceed. Patients will be contacted directly if there is any change to their clinic appointments.
Outpatient Laboratory Services (January 4-7, 2022): All sites in the Eastern Health region
- All non-urgent appointments have been cancelled.
- Urgent/emergent laboratory testing and services will continue.
- Eastern Health’s outpatient blood collection sites are restricted to urgent blood collection only. This includes blood testing for patients requiring: INRs (international normalized ratios), therapeutic drug-level monitoring testing and, for cancer care patients, monitoring of cancer clinic profiles and other required cancer-related testing.
In order to limit the spread of COVID-19 and to keep both our communities and health-care workers safe, visits to the emergency department are for urgent and emergent health-care issues only. Individuals can call the 811 HealthLine to speak to a registered nurse 24 hours a day, seven days a week about any health issue or concern. In case of an emergency, individuals should proceed to the nearest emergency department or call 911 for an ambulance.
Eastern Health thanks the public for their support and reminds them of the importance of continuing to follow public health guidance to protect themselves, their loved ones, and their communities. These precautions are designed to help keep patients, clients, residents, visitors, staff and physicians safe and help in the prevention and spread of infection.
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