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<\/p>\nFor Tim Lang, the smell in the hallway of Saskatoon’s Royal University Hospital has lingered.<\/p>\n
Lang visited his mother there last week after she was taken to hospital to get an MRI after suffering a stroke.<\/p>\n
His mother spent three days in the hospital’s hallway last week awaiting the MRI.<\/p>\n
And Lang, who lives in Unity, about 170 kilometres west of Saskatoon, is now vowing to avoid Saskatoon if either he or a family member requires health care.<\/p>\n
He said he witnessed unsanitary conditions at RUH, including the stench from patients who had soiled themselves, and counted hundreds of people passing by his mother’s hospital bed in the hallway.<\/p>\n
“So you’re in a hospital emergency room and the cleanliness is terrible,” Lang said in an interview Thursday. “The traffic \u2014 you’ve got a stroke victim lying in a hallway where 500 people a day walk past your bed. It was just brutal.”<\/p>\n
Overcrowding peak has passed: SHA<\/p>\n
John Ash, vice-president of integrated Saskatoon health with the Saskatchewan Health Authority, told reporters Thursday that the peak of the overcrowding has passed.<\/p>\n
Ash held a news conference in response to viral social media videos posted by Saskatoon real estate agent Lynn Harmon showing patients crowded into hallways at RUH.<\/p>\n
At the height of the capacity pressure last week, 42 patients were waiting for an in-patient bed, Ash said.<\/p>\n
“Your ultimate goal is we don’t want to have patients waiting in the hallways,” he added.<\/p>\n
WATCH |\u00a0Hallway health care draws fire in overcrowded Saskatoon hospital: <\/p>\n
‘No dignity’: Sask. man decries mother’s days-long stay in hospital hallway<\/p>\n
Tim Lang says after his mother suffered a stroke, she had to spend three days in an emergency room hallway at Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon waiting for a bed. The Saskatchewan Health Authority responded after a viral social media video showed patients crowded into hallways.<\/p>\n
The SHA is adding 109 beds in Saskatoon to prevent future overcrowding, Ash said. Twenty of the beds have opened so far.<\/p>\n
An early start to flu season helped contribute to the overcrowding, Ash said.<\/p>\n
He added that people have the right to record video inside hospitals like RUH, but he cautioned people to show respect for the privacy of staff and patients.<\/p>\n
“We want to make sure that everybody knows that the emergency departments are there when we need them,” Ash said.<\/p>\n
But Keith Jorgenson, the Opposition NDP shadow health minister, said the videos reveal “unacceptable” conditions at the hospital.<\/p>\n
“It shows us clearly that our health-care system is broken,” Jorgenson told reporters at a news conference in Saskatoon Thursday.<\/p>\n
Cleanliness ‘atrocious’<\/p>\n
Lang said he counted 172 people passing by his mother’s bed in the hallway at RUH from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. on Sept. 25. He said the non-stop traffic prevented his mother from sleeping.<\/p>\n
The lack of sleep made it difficult to assess her condition when she had appointments with a speech pathologist and an occupational therapist, he said.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/tim-lang-ruh-2025.jpg\")
Tim Lang says his mom, who was recovering from a stroke, couldn’t sleep in the busy hospital hallway. (Submitted by Tim Lang)<\/p>\n
His mother was eventually transferred to a private room, where she improved dramatically, Lang said. She is now recovering at a hospital in Unity.<\/p>\n
But Lang remains upset about the conditions in the hallway at RUH. He said urine on the floor in the hallway was insufficiently cleaned.<\/p>\n
“The cleanliness in there was atrocious,” Lang said. “And the smell was atrocious.”<\/p>\n
Lang also said there were many people at the hospital suffering from substance abuse who probably needed treatment at a facility dedicated to addiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Tim Lang, the smell in the hallway of Saskatoon’s Royal University Hospital has lingered. Lang visited his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53677,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[163,521,85,46],"class_list":["post-53676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}