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<\/p>\nJeremy Cockrill, Saskatchewan\u2019s health minister, said the provincial government\u2019s focus is to reduce the number of service disruptions in order to ensure residents can receive timely care as close to home as possible.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI think, eventually, we will get closer to real-time information, but at this point, this is what\u2019s workable with the Saskatchewan Health Authority,\u201d Cockrill said.<\/p>\n
Cockrill said the government\u2019s ultimate goal is to get rid of service disruptions altogether, and it\u2019s been working toward that by hiring more health-care workers around the province.<\/p>\n
The province said Saskatchewan has \u201cseen a downward trend in the number of temporary emergency room disruptions over the past three years,\u201d and said measures it has implemented, including the virtual physician program and the health human resources action plan, \u201chave helped prevent more than 6,000 potential emergency room disruptions in more than 28 communities around the province since 2023.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to the online reporting, the government said signage is posted at affected facilities during an emergency room disruption, and information on service availability can also be accessed through Saskatchewan\u2019s 811 HealthLine.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn any life-threatening emergency, 9-1-1 should be called immediately so paramedics can assess, treat, and transport the patient to the nearest available site for medical attention,\u201d the government added.<\/p>\n
Cockrill said just getting to the current frequency of reporting has been a lengthy process, taking a lot of work to get the reporting consistent around the province.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we\u2019ve achieved that consistency, now we can work on increasing the frequency and availability of that information for patients,\u201d the minister said.<\/p>\n
While the Saskatchewan NDP has been pushing the government for better reporting, NDP rural and remote health critic Jared Clarke said doubling the frequency isn\u2019t enough to address the issues created by service disruptions.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople in an emergency, people need to know whether or not their emergency room is open or closed,\u201d Clarke said. \u201cWe know that this information exists in the (Saskatchewan Health Authority). Why can they not simply give that to the people of Saskatchewan?\u201d<\/p>\n
In the fall, Clarke introduced a bill which would require real-time reporting of service disruptions. It passed a second reading, but was voted down on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Clarke accused the government of playing political games with this issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe day we introduced our bill was the day they suddenly went to a once-a-day reporting of hospital closures. And now here, today, when the bill could possibly go to committee, it\u2019s a miracle. They\u2019ve they\u2019ve announced a slightly better version of it,\u201d said Clarke.<\/p>\n
Cockrill said on Thursday that the government and NDP were in agreement that patients should have get most up-to-date information possible, but he said the NDP\u2019s bill wasn\u2019t operationally feasible.<\/p>\n
The NDP called the government\u2019s decision to vote down the bill reckless and irresponsible.<\/p>\n
\u2013with files from 980 CJME\u2019s Lisa Schick<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jeremy Cockrill, Saskatchewan\u2019s health minister, said the provincial government\u2019s focus is to reduce the number of service disruptions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640171,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":["post-640170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640170","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=640170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}