EMERGENCY RELIEF
36 beds should ease pressures at city hospitals
Health Minister Jim Reiter says a new suite of emergency care beds at Royal University Hospital will help alleviate struggles at the Saskatoon’s overcrowded emergency rooms.
The 36 new beds were announced last summer and unveiled Friday, a day after a review from the Saskatchewan Health Authority highlighted “significant” capacity issues at emergency rooms in Saskatoon and Regina.
“There’s been a lot in the media lately about attention to emergency department wait times, and rightfully so,” Reiter said at a ceremony in the new space. “We’ve got congestion there that staff are working diligently to help on. That’s not unique to Saskatchewan — that’s a problem right across the country — but I think this is certainly going to help with that.”
The beds will join with existing rooms to form a 48-bed acute care unit in what used to be RUH’S former postpartum centre; those services have since shifted to the new Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital.
Norma Noesgaard, manager of the new unit, said it will ease pressure on the hospital during times of high traffic and will simplify work for physicians, who currently walk as much as six kilometres a day to visit their patients.
“Because of the way the medicine group was previously operating, it was actually a challenge for physicians to see their patients day to day,” Noesgaard said. “When patients are spread through the whole building on every floor and in every unit, you spend a significant amount of your day just trying to find them.”
The announcement of the unit, which will open March 9, comes one day after the authority sent Reiter a review of emergency rooms he requested in the fall.
The document says overcrowding at core hospitals is partially due to a flow of patients from rural areas going to emergency rooms in Saskatoon and Regina even when local care might suffice, as well as inefficiencies that keep patients in long-term care in hospitals longer than they need to be there.
Dr. Anne Pausjenssen, a general internist, said mental health issues or socio-economic factors can also keep patients in emergency rooms longer.
“We have issues with addictions. We have issues with poverty that all provinces in Canada have that will affect length of stay,” Pausjenssen said.
Saskatchewan Union of Nurses president Tracy Zambory said the review — which she advocated for — is a good start, but she thinks more needs to be done to get primary care to patients in rural areas before they’re forced to visit the emergency room. “I think maybe we’re getting to the point where we need to stop talking and start coming up with a concrete action plan on how to move forward here.”
SEIU-WEST, the union representing more than 11,500 health care workers in the province, argues staffing — not patient flow — is the real issue. The union has spent years locked in bargaining with government without a collective agreement, due in part to differences over how much staffing is necessary.
“This report is a smoke screen for the larger systemic issues that face our health care system,” president Barbara Cape said in a release.
Reiter said he intends to discuss the review with senior health officials.