Eastern Health CEO talks frankly on variety of topics
‘I would discourage any manager from making absolute statements’
Tuesday’s exchanges between Eastern Health CEO Vickie Kaminski and thetelegram.com readers touched on a number of issues.
Here are some of the more relevant: From
“Mike” — As a former trades worker with Eastern Health who left due to adverse working conditions, are you aware of the failing mechanical infrastructure due to the lack of preventative maintenance and shortage of mechanical equipment repairers? Three journeyman ... left from a compliment of nine, and one of those is part-time.
Kaminski — Thank you for this e-mail. Yes I am aware of the issues with our infrastructure. Each year the Department of Health and Community Services approves a capital budget for infrastructure repairs and maintenance. We are also concerned about a shortage of skilled tradespeople and are planning for that shortage now in an effort to provide seamless infrastructure support. It is not an easy problem, and with infrastructure issues across the province, it will take some time to get everything modernized. We are also in the process of developing an overall redevelopment plan for all our buildings inside Eastern Health. From
“Dean” — Will Eastern Health be collecting rental fees and utility fees from the proposed contractor of retail cafeteria sector? Will Eastern Health release the report done by Health Care Management group (HCM) unedited? Considering Eastern Health used tax payer dollars to have the report submitted, shouldn't it be public knowledge? If Eastern Health is using a contractor to provide retail cafeteria services, the public shouldn't have to cover the cost of their maintenence, utility, and repair costs.
Kaminski — Let me answer both these questions separately. First for the retail sector of the cafeteria, any contract will be awarded on the basis of a business plan that has no cost and perhaps a cost benefit to Eastern Health.
The second part of your question has to do with the HCM process we used. There is no report generated by the group. They provided us with individual hospital data from hospitals selected for peer group comparisons and that data is not ours to release. We
We must be able to give annual leave when it is requested
and staff need to be able to depend on that leave, unless there are unusual circumstances such as H1N1 outbreaks, etc.
Vickie Kaminski, CEO of Eastern Health
had to sign confidentiality agreements prior to be allowed to review the data. We used that data to compare ourselves and our financial and utilization data. No reports were generated by HCM. From
From “lpn” — As an LPN with Eastern Heath, a big reason sick leave is so high is because we have only one LPN to cover any annual leave. Therefore 99 per cent of the time it’s denied. What do you expect people to do?
Kaminski — I agree with your concern and have heard it expressed more than I would like. We must be able to give annual leave when it is requested and staff need to be able to depend on that leave, unless there are unusual circumstances such as H1N1 outbreaks, etc. But that should be the exception not the rule. Part of our issue is we are now in a cycle where temporary or part time staff are being fully booked and we have no room to schedule the relief being requested. We need to break that cycle and bring back some predictability to leave requests and be able to honour them. From
From “Laura F”— I am a registered nurse employed by Eastern Health. In an effort to save money, Eastern Health has announced that the first sick call during a shift is not going to be replaced. Our manager has also informed us our patient load will now increase from six patients on a night shift to eight patients. I currently work on a very busy unit, and in order to take proper care of our patients we often miss breaks. How can patient care, patient safety, and patient outcomes not be affected by less nurses working with an increased workload?
Kaminski — A blanket approach to these types of patient care-related issues isn't going to work. We do need a workload measurement system that helps us determine appropriate nurse to patient ratios. For example on some of our alternate level of care patients, having a patient load of eight patients on a night shift might be appropriate. I would discourage any manager from making absolute statements and would encourage them to discuss these issues with staff. There will be times that automatic replacement of every sick call needs to happen and times when the first and even the second sick call can go unreplaced. The expectation is that managers are involved in decision making and can make these decisions on a daily basis.
To see more questions and answers from the session with Kaminski, visit our website at www.thetelegram.com.