The Saskatchewan Health Authority gave good news to residents in Radville and surrounding communities on Monday.
Emergency services are resuming at the Radville Marian Health Centre starting July 27 after they were suspended in order to convert the facility into a temporary community hospital. Radville was one of 12 communities that were affected by the move from the SHA to establish more community hospitals in case of a major spike in COVID-19 cases.
Rene Bourassa, mayor for the town of Radville, said he is happy with the news considering their health centre services a number of rural communities in southern Saskatchewan.
He said one of the key holdups for their centre was securing enough staff moving forward.
“We can’t have our nurses and staff who look after the elderly go into the emergency side,” he explained. “They cannot go back to the emergency room and vice versa.”
Bourassa said while their emergency room was put on hold, their physicians were dispatched to Weyburn and they were left with nothing in Radville.
“I am so glad we got our doctors back,” added Bourassa. “We have no problem with our doctors going to help cover with COVID when it first started. We had no issues with that. But we weren’t very happy when we found out that it was only our doctors going to back up Weyburn on the emergency side.”
A statement from the SHA on Monday shared it was able to secure interim physician coverage for the last week of July and the month of August.
Bourassa mentioned that Radville’s health facility supports residents as far west as Bengough, down to the U.S. border and as far east as the Estevan area. He said they have even had people from Yellow Grass use their facility with Weyburn nearby.
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