A leaked provincial safety risk report\u00a0released by\u00a0the Opposition NDP\u00a0shows the Dr. F.H. Wigmore Regional\u00a0Hospital\u2019s emergency department is under severe strain, with capacity over 100 per cent and wait times ballooning.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Saskatchewan NDP Health Shadow Minister Meara Conway\u00a0said the leaked \u201covercapacity safety risk level\u201d data tracks hospital occupancy, available beds, emergency room volume and longest wait times.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to her, the report shows Moose Jaw\u2019s emergency department moved from\u00a0high risk\u00a0to\u00a0very high\u00a0risk over the past few days.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The\u00a0hospital\u2019s\u00a0capacity exceeded 100 per cent during that time, and the longest wait times climbed from 33 hours on Sunday to\u00a073 hours\u00a0on Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Conway said those figures were \u201cdistressing\u201d and \u201cunheard of\u201d for a community hospital.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Safety risk report shows worsening strain\u00a0<\/p>\n
Conway said the report highlights mounting pressure on frontline health care services.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat speaks to a system that is being strained to the absolute brink,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re\u00a0concerned about\u00a0the experience of patients waiting in these situations.\u00a0We\u2019re\u00a0concerned about the distress of frontline healthcare workers having to work in these\u00a0conditions.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
NDP calls on provincial government to act\u00a0<\/p>\n
Conway blamed multiple systemic issues for the crisis, including:\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tLack of patient flow due to insufficient long-term care beds and home care options\u00a0
\n\tShort staffing and failures in recruitment and retention\u00a0\u00a0
\n\tSocial issues such as homelessness and addiction worsening pressures on emergency services\u00a0
<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need action on all fronts, and we\u2019re just not seeing it,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Conway called on Premier Scott Moe and provincial Minister of Health Jeremy Cockrill to lay out a plan to address the emergency department\u00a0overload before the holidays, traditionally a time of increased strain on hospitals.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Staffing,\u00a0beds\u00a0and system failures\u00a0<\/p>\n
Asked what the plan should include, Conway described what\u00a0she\u2019s\u00a0hearing from health care workers: a \u201cpicture of multiple system failures.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s\u00a0the issue of the lack of\u00a0patient, so lack of long-term care beds, home care options, affordable care\u00a0for seniors, which is contributing to this,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are\u00a0the issues\u00a0of short staffing and the failure to effectively recruit and\u00a0retain\u00a0enough healthcare workers.\u00a0There are\u00a0all the social issues that we see the\u00a0Sask. Party\u00a0failing to address.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Conway also said the government should expand rapid response services to help patients who\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0need to remain in hospital and overhaul its recruitment and retention strategy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She argued stakeholders in health care have not endorsed the current plan.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Conway added that ongoing winter weather has made inter-hospital transfers more difficult, limiting \u201cload level\u201d or the practice of shifting patients between\u00a0centres\u00a0to ease strain.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the storm happening right now, there\u2019s concern about that,\u201d she said on Wednesday\u00a0afternoon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Conway reiterated that the situation in Moose Jaw is dire and urged immediate action from the provincial\u00a0government.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Response from Saskatchewan Health Authority\u00a0<\/p>\n
The following written statement was given by Saskatchewan Health Authority Chief Operating Officer Derek Miller:\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) is committed to providing high quality, safe and accessible patient care to the people of Saskatchewan and would like to take this opportunity to thank our staff and physicians for the work that they do every day to help deliver care.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Interpreting internal documents which are used regularly by health system experts to inform decision making outside of their intended context should be done with caution. Wait times included in the report referenced measure the time from patient registration to discharge from the emergency department.\u00a0These wait times do NOT\u00a0represent\u00a0the time patients wait to be assessed by a physician.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hospitals across the province respond to patient ebbs and flows. The SHA monitors emergency department and acute care capacity across all hospital sites in the province on a continuous, real-time basis to support system-wide decision making, including transport decisions for patients who require a higher level of care or transfer to home hospital. This monitoring includes overall hospital occupancy, patients\u00a0identified\u00a0for\u00a0admission\u00a0and those being\u00a0monitored\u00a0in emergency departments. A scoring system is used to assess levels of risk and to guide\u00a0appropriate actions\u00a0at different thresholds.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The SHA is committed to meeting the needs of patients as close to home as possible, including during periods of increased demand, while ensuring patients can be safely transferred to appropriate facilities to meet their care need, and that our care teams are properly supported in these high demand situations.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A leaked provincial safety risk report\u00a0released by\u00a0the Opposition NDP\u00a0shows the Dr. F.H. Wigmore Regional\u00a0Hospital\u2019s emergency department is under…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":{"0":"post-358800","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}