REGINA -The opposition New Democrats were raising concerns again about the staffing situation at Saskatchewan hospitals on Wednesday.
At a media event near Regina General Hospital, Opposition Leader Carla Beck and Health Critic Vicki Mowat pointed to a leaked Saskatchewan Health Authority memo dated June 28 on a bed closure in the Medical Intensive Care unit at RGH.
The memo reads as follows: “Despite a number of recruitment strategies, we are finding significant staffing challenges in the medical intensive care unit at the Regina General Hospital. Due to multiple vacancies, staffing these beds over the last number of months has relied heavily upon contract services. Unfortunately, there has been a number of contracts cancelled at the last minute and we are unable to find a replacement until late summer. Due to the number of vacancies we will be closing one bed in MICU on June 30 until September 5th, 2023.”
The NDP took the opportunity to again paint a picture of health care being in crisis. Beck accused the government of having failed in its recruitment strategy.
“The fact is their plan is not working, far from it,” said Beck. “It is clear that the recruitment strategy is not working and it’s healthcare workers like we see behind us today, and those looking for care — it’s those people who are paying the price. Yet we see this Premier (Scott Moe) and this Minister (Paul Merriman) walking around patting themselves on the back.”
The release of the memo to the media comes on the heels of a government news release from the Ministry of Health last week, which had touted the arrival of five new registered nurses that week from the Philippines — the first of several groups of nurses being recruited. That news release also touted the overall progress in recruitment efforts, something the NDP disputed Wednesday.
“The people of Saskatchewan, I know, have no patience being told one thing by the government, and finding out that the opposite is true,” said Beck. “Today, however, we are releasing an internal SHA memo that shows just that. The Sask Party says one thing publicly while their internal memo paints a much, much different picture.”
Mowat accused the government of a “lack of transparency and dishonesty.”
Mowat also pointed to delays in knee and hip replacements. This was in reference to data highlighted at an NDP media event the previous week from the Canadian Institute for Health Information. That data pointed to Saskatchewan having the worst wait times in Canada for knee replacements (466 days) and for hip replacements (309 days).
Of the government’s health care recruitment plan, Mowat said it “has zero targets, zero timelines, no new ideas and nothing on retention. We need to be working with our healthcare workers on retention strategies while promoting some of our underutilized staff like our part-time and casual healthcare workers into full-time positions to reduce the strain on the system.”
