Canadian infection prevention could relieve overcrowding while protecting patients and healthcare workers

Across Canada, patients who have been admitted to hospital are spending excessive periods in emergency departments waiting for inpatient beds. Preventing hospital infections could release thousands of the beds they need.

Recent data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information show that some admitted patients remain in emergency departments for almost two days or longer before they can be moved elsewhere in the hospital. Limited inpatient-bed availability is one important contributor to these delays. Patients remain under the care of emergency staff while they wait, reducing the capacity to assess and treat new arrivals.

Governments are responding to hospital crowding with plans for new facilities, additional beds and more staff. These investments may be necessary, but there is another source of hospital capacity that deserves urgent attention: preventing the infections that keep patients in hospital longer.

Healthcare-associated infections are among the most common adverse events in acute care. They cause suffering and death, increase healthcare costs and consume beds and staff time that are urgently needed for other patients. The growing threat of antibiotic-resistant bacteria makes prevention still more important.

Hospitals Face an Inherent Infection Risk

Hospitals occupy a difficult position in the fight against infection. They exist to make sick people well, yet they bring large numbers of vulnerable people together. Some patients arrive carrying infections. Others have weakened immune systems, open wounds or invasive devices that make them unusually susceptible. Healthcare workers move frequently between patients, while shared equipment and frequently touched surfaces provide additional routes for microorganisms to travel.

This does not mean that hospital infections are inevitable. It means that hospitals are inherently high-risk environments in which preventing transmission requires constant vigilance. A 2024 Canadian survey found that approximately 8.1% of hospital patients had at least one healthcare-associated infection. These infections remain among the most common adverse events in acute care.

Doctors, nurses and other caregivers may clean their hands dozens of times during a shift. Even excellent professionals can miss an opportunity when care is urgent, complicated or interrupted. Infection prevention must therefore involve more than asking people to be careful. Healthcare workers need systems that help them perform the right action at the right moment.

Infections Consume Hospital Capacity

Healthcare-associated infections cause suffering and death, but their effect on hospital capacity receives less attention. Infected patients often require additional treatment and remain in hospital longer. Surgical and device-related infections, for example, can add approximately seven to 11 days to a hospital stay.

Using Canadian estimates of the number of healthcare-associated infections and the additional hospital days they cause, approximately 1.7 million bed-days may be consumed each year treating these infections. That is equivalent to having nearly 5,000 hospital beds occupied every day of the year. The calculation is an estimate rather than a national administrative count, but it illustrates the scale of capacity that infection consumes.

If an effective national effort prevented 70% of this burden, Canada could recover about 1.2 million bed-days annually. That is the equivalent capacity of approximately 3,300 staffed hospital beds. In physical capacity, this would be comparable to adding several large hospitals, without waiting years for new buildings to be planned and constructed.

The benefit would extend beyond the beds. Every hospitalized patient requires time from physicians, nurses, pharmacists, therapists, diagnostic personnel, cleaners, food-service workers and many others. Preventing infections would allow these overstretched teams to spend less time treating avoidable complications and more time providing surgery, emergency care, rehabilitation and other services Canadians are waiting for.

Canadian Technology Can Help

Hand hygiene remains one of the most important defences against infection transmission in healthcare. Hygienic Echo Inc. has developed an advanced Canadian system designed to improve it. The wearable Buddy Badge recognizes when a caregiver may have missed an important hand-hygiene opportunity and provides an immediate, discreet reminder.

The system supports healthcare workers rather than blaming them. It intervenes when microorganisms might otherwise be carried from one patient, surface or care environment to another. Technology cannot eliminate healthcare-associated infections by itself, but it can make safe practices more consistent and measurable when combined with education, environmental cleaning, antimicrobial stewardship and strong clinical leadership.

Canada has the engineering and clinical expertise to lead in infection prevention. Yet promising Canadian technologies often struggle to obtain their first major customers here. Governments and healthcare organizations should establish practical routes for independent evaluation and adoption, measuring results in infections prevented, hospital days avoided, staff time released and patient outcomes improved.

Prevention Is Healthcare Capacity

New hospitals and additional healthcare workers may still be needed, but construction is expensive, recruitment is difficult and both take years. Preventing healthcare-associated infections offers a faster route to additional capacity by making better use of the hospitals and workforce Canada already has.

A national infection-prevention strategy should prepare Canada for future pandemics while also addressing the infections occurring in healthcare facilities today. Governments, hospitals, universities and Canadian companies should work together to identify effective interventions and bring them into use.

By preventing avoidable infections, supporting healthcare workers and adopting effective Canadian innovations, Canada could save lives, recover thousands of hospital beds and provide care to more people using resources that already exist. That would make Canada both stronger and safer.

By Dr. Geoff Fernie

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