OttawaWhen Louise Pivato arrived by ambulance at the General campus of The Ottawa Hospital’s emergency room this summer, she wasn’t expecting to be ushered into a facility called “the garage.”Former ambulance bay transformed into overflow facility for patients awaiting admissionEmma Weller · CBC News · Posted: Sep 23, 2025 4:42 PM EDT | Last Updated: 1 hour agoPatients at The Ottawa Hospital alarmed by conditions of overflow facility at the General campus Nicknamed “the garage,” the old ambulance bay was transformed last year to house patients who are waiting for a bed on a ward. The hospital says it’s to help manage the high volume of patients it’s seeing. But patients say the conditions are not conducive for healing. When Louise Pivato arrived by ambulance at the General campus of The Ottawa Hospital’s (TOH) emergency room this summer, she wasn’t expecting to be ushered into a facility called “the garage.”The garage, as it’s unofficially known, is the hospital’s old ambulance bay, transformed in January 2024 to house up to 20 patients who are awaiting admission and a bed in a ward.Pivato, 76, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in May, and has experienced multiple fevers since. That landed her in the ER on five occasions, and each time she was sent to the overflow facility. “People who are there are sick. You went to emergency in an ambulance, you are sick. You’re on intravenous, you shouldn’t be on a stretcher where there’s noise and vents banging and it sounds like a construction zone — it’s absurd,” Pivato said. She describes the facility as a two-story industrial-like space, with a big ventilation system blasting air and fluorescent lights lining the ceilings. Pivato said the beds are divided by curtains, not walls. CBC was unable to access the facility, but Pivato’s daughter Laura Banducci and another patient who did not want to be named to protect their privacy provided photos and videos of the space. Pivato has stayed overnight in the garage for seven nights in total, including one four-night stretch. “We arrive there, we’re concerned about her fever and it’s on the premise that she’s immunocompromised and she’s at risk for infection, and then they put her in this big hangar essentially for four days where she’s basically in a swamp of infection in the emergency room,” said Banducci. Because Pivato has cancer, Banducci said they’re advised to go to hospital whenever she developes a fever. But after facing the conditions in the garage, Banducci said it makes them want to go against that advice. “How could it be that somebody who is immunocompromised is better off sleeping in the garage than at home? That’s definitely not the case,” she said. Laura Banducci, Pivato’s daughter, said they now avoid going to the hospital when her mother develops a fever, despite medical advice to the contrary. (Francis Ferland/CBC)The Ottawa Hospital declined an interview with CBC. In an emailed statement, a representative said the space was created as a temporary solution to manage the high volume of patients the hospital has been seeing. “While it does not look like a traditional hospital ward, it has played a critical role in increasing capacity, improving patient flow and ensuring that patients receive emergency care when they need it,” the hospital wrote. In a follow-up email, the hospital said it’s working with Infrastructure Ontario and the Ministry of Health “to expand and enhance this space into a more permanent solution.”System ‘is not designed to get people better’Renée Gibbins told CBC she’s happy the hospital is looking to make the facility more permanent, but is “sad that they have to.”Gibbins also witnessed “the garage” when she visited her friend who spent nearly 30 hours there to be treated for jugular vein thrombosis. “Given the extent of the danger to my friend’s life, it felt like this was a deeply inappropriate place to be,” Gibbins said. This photo taken Aug. 8 shows the makeshift space in ‘the garage’ where Renée Gibbins’s friend stayed for four days. (Submitted)During a separate hospital visit, Gibbins’s friend spent four days in a makeshift space in a corridor. “Imagine being in the hospital, so sick you’ve almost died, and you spend five days listening to everybody’s business because the nursing board is right there — hearing people walk past you, hearing people, families searching for them.”Both situations exemplify broader issues in Ontario’s health-care system, Gibbins said. ‘It’s a system that is not designed to get people better,’ Gibbins told CBC. (Emma Weller/CBC)According to the latest data from Ontario Health, the average wait time to get an initial assessment by a doctor at the General campus of TOH is 3.3 hours. The provincial average is two hours. The average length of stay in emergency for patients who are admitted to the hospital is 20.7 hours. However, in a statement, the Ontario Hospital Association said as of July, 90 per cent of patients in ER who are waiting to be admitted wait for as long as 11 hours. The association points to Ontario’s rapidly changing population, and a backlog in hospitals caused by patients “who are waiting for a more appropriate level of care in another care setting.”Gibbins said based on what she’s witnessed, the system needs an overhaul.”It’s a brutal system. It’s a system that doesn’t see the humanity of the people who are working in it, it’s a system that doesn’t see the humanity of the people who are trying to access it, and it’s a system that is not designed to get people better,” Gibbins said.ABOUT THE AUTHOREmma Weller is a reporter for CBC Ottawa and she’s also worked with CBC’s Your World Tonight. She can be reached at emma.weller@cbc.ca.
Patients speak out after spending time in General hospital’s ‘garage’
