REGINA – The opposition New Democrats are again blasting the Saskatchewan Health Authority, and the government, over yet another notifications screwup involving closed rural emergency rooms.
This time it involved closure notices issued by SHA involving the Kipling emergency room, which was closed from 4 p.m. Oct. 10 to 8 a.m. on Oct. 14. The SHA notice redirected the patients from Kipling to the emergency room at Arcola Hospital, except Arcola’s emergency room was closed starting on the afternoon of Oct. 9 and remained closed through much of the long weekend.
This latest turn of events comes on the heels of other SHA notification screwups in the past number of weeks. At the beginning of the month, the opposition NDP were calling out the SHA for issuing a statement to the media asserting that the emergency room in Herbert was still open, when in fact it was closed.
The NDP was also critical of an incident in September when the ER in Outlook was closed. At that to,me notices went out from the SHA redirecting patients in Outlook to another ER in Davidson, which was also closed at the same time.
“Somebody is going to get killed,” said Keith Jorgenson, Saskatchewan NDP Associate Shadow Minister for Health, in a statement Tuesday.
“These are emergency rooms. You can’t just throw up a ‘we’ll be back soon’ sign and call it a day… I’m shocked that the Saskatchewan Health Authority and the Sask. Party didn’t clean up their act when we brought attention to this very issue a month ago.”
The NDP also reiterated Tuesday their plans to introduce legislation in the fall to require a formal public notification of all ER closures in the province.
Sask Today has reached out to the province for comment.
