Push on for IV therapy
Henderson after provincial Treasury Board for approval
Assurances were given last week that efforts to return intravenous therapy services to the O’Leary Health Centre are continuing.
Health Minister Robert Henderson told the O’Leary Health Foundation’s annual meeting that he has been working for the return of IV therapy, but so far hasn’t been able to convince the provincial Treasury Board of its merits.
The minister said he will continue to lobby for the service and will be calling upon Community Hospitals West administrator, Paul Young, to help with the convincing.
“We’ll help you all we can,” foundation chair Eva Rodgerson, said in conveying the foundation’s interest in having the service restored.
“Travel is a big problem,” she noted.
Rodgerson described how her late husband could get most of his medical care in O’Leary, but was expected to go to Western Hospital in Alberton for his IV therapy.
Young said ambulatory care has been reduced at O’Leary’s Community Hospital, given the demands for primary care, but certain procedures, like suture removal and dressing changes, are still performed.
“We have an incredible group of competent staff,” he said in suggesting the personnel is available in West Prince to make ambulatory care, including IV therapy, work in O’Leary.
Young explained that some people require IV therapy over several days, or even multiple times a day, and have had to travel to either
Alberton or Summerside for the service.
He said it would be less costly to O’Leary area patients if the service was available in the community, and it would take some burden off the ambulatory care departments at Western and Prince County hospitals.
He’s proposing the ambulatory care services be moved out of primary care and moved to an area closer to the medical floor, thus freeing up the primary care area for more primary care and chronic disease
prevention programming.
Young estimates the expanded service would require 1.5 full-time equivalent nursing positions, but he suggests supplies would be cost-neutral.
“It’s just about reallocating those services and spreading them amongst the three facilities,” he suggested.
“It’s just about reallocating those services and spreading them amongst the three facilities.” Paul Young