REGINA - There was plenty of reaction at the Legislature on Tuesday to news that Saskatchewan Health Authority had released its action plan for Saskatoon hospitals.
The Saskatoon Capacity Pressure Action Plan was announced Tuesday by SHA officials Andrew Will, CEO and John Ash, Vice President Integrated Saskatoon Health. The plan addresses capacity issues in the wake of last week’s news that the Saskatoon Fire Department had found fire code violations at St. Paul’s Hospital from the overcrowding of patients.
At the legislature, Minister of Health Everett Hindley was asked by reporters about the measures announced in the SHA action plan.
“I’d say it’s an additional strategy,” said Hindley of what was announced -- one that was in addition to the Health Human Resources Action Plan already announced and in effect since last year.
Hindley said he had had conversations with senior leadership of the SHA over the weekend to talk about the current status. He said it was his understanding that the senior VPs including the CEO, were out at St. Paul’s Hospital over the weekend to tour the hospital and get a sense of the capacity issues, and they also talked to front line health care workers.
“They’re doing a fantastic job trying to manage the pressure they are faced with, but recognizing they don’t have all the supports they need and the resources they need in order to treat patients as effectively as possible,” said Hindley.
Hindley said it was important to note there’s a number of steps taken already to add “whether it’s more beds in the city of Saskatoon for example, or at RUH (Royal University Hospital), but then also to identify, with folks they talk to and also internally, some additional immediate steps that can be being taken as well as some 90-day steps and some longer-term ones as well, to make sure there is a fulsome strategy in place.”
A significant component was staffing, he said. Hindley said in conversations with SHA and Ministry of Health officials, they are “going to be doing a number of different things here in the very short term, in the immediate term, to address some of those challenges.
“For example, adding additional staff on the weekends, for example, or bringing in more staff into the ER at least on a temporary basis to help manage what we’re faced with right now. So, more nurses, more social workers, security personnel as an example. And I think that it’s a combination of all of these different ideas that will work together towards helping to, again, to make sure that there is patient flow happening.”
Hindley also pointed to steps that were underway already, such as the SHA, “adding some additional transitional beds, utilizing personal care home capacity, again so that when people go to the hospitals that they get the care that they need. But then when it’s time to transition to the next step of their treatment, that is there so they’re not taking up a bed in the hospital. So hopeful these steps will help address the concerns, but again, recognizing that this needs to be a constant, continuous improvement and continuing to monitor the situation and make decisions and implement actions as quickly as we can.”
As for the NDP reaction, Opposition Leader Carla Beck made it known to reporters she thought the actions by the SHA should have come far sooner to address issues that had been around for a while.
“Two things I would say about it — one, I think it would surprise people this wasn’t already the plan in the first place. And the second, just looking at it, having talked to our healthcare workers, having talked to our critics: where is the staff going to come from?” said Beck.
“This is the most persistent issue in our healthcare system is the lack of staffing. And the solution we see proposed adds beds, adds the urgent care centre, but we still haven’t dealt with the staffing issue, and we see an unwillingness on the part of this government to even meet up with healthcare workers to hear what their experience is and work with them to find those solutions.”
Beck said people in health care know that they have been “100 percent overcapacity 100 per cent of the time for months… again, my main concern is with staffing and the number of people we’re losing, and the inadequate numbers to properly staff our healthcare system.”
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