REGINA — Controversy has swirled this week at the Legislature again over the issue of short staffing at rural hospitals.
This week in Question Period, Health Minister Jeremy Cockrill has been on the hot seat from the Opposition over the reporting of hospital closures under the new notification system introduced by the SHA this week, and in particular over the criteria over what constitutes an ER closure.
The concerns raised by the NDP are over the contents of a leaked memo from the SHA, communicating to staff of the new closure notification process. The Opposition claimed that this memo confirmed emergency rooms were being forced to stay open even when only one registered nurse is available on duty in the hospital.
Opposition critics went ballistic, with Associate Health Critic Keith Jorgenson describing it on Thursday as perhaps the "biggest health care story of the year."
"What we see the government proposing is having one, one single nurse running an entire hospital. So that's everything from doing lab testing, managing and overseeing care in a long-term care facility, the ER, you know, managing the care of a potentially critically ill patient in the ER. They're asking one RN to do every single one of those things. And we honestly think that that is dangerous."
During Question Period on Wednesday, Rural and Remote Health Critic Jared Clarke accused Health Minister Jeremy Cockrill of having "changed the rules" to keep rural emergency rooms open, by having one registered nurse on site.
"This is a dangerous, dangerous political game, and it’s going to get someone killed," Clarke said. "How can the minister justify playing such a dangerous game with the health care of Saskatchewan people?"
Cockrill replied "that is not the case."
"We have a rural emergency room, Mr. Speaker, physician required. There’s an RN [registered nurse] required, and there’s lab and imaging services required as well. That’s what we are focused on, ensuring that all three of those services are available in the facility to people who may present with an acute issue, Mr. Speaker."
In speaking to reporters, Cockrill said of the NDP claims that "that's a lie, and it's unfortunate."
"It's disappointing to kind of see that line of questioning. In my view it's a little grandstanding."
There were clear regulations that in order for there to be acute care services "there needs to be nursing services… and then there also have to be lab services," he said.
"The goalposts have not changed, the rules have not changed. What went out from the Saskatchewan Health Authority this week is a memo communicating this is the new process on how disruptions are going to be reported and communicated to the public and this is how internally we're going to manage that and make sure they're consistent across the province."
Derek Miller, Chief Operating Officer of SHA, said what they have been doing is "standardizing how we capture and determine disruptions to emergency rooms."
"We operate under the requirement that we have to have two professionals, one of which needs to be an RN. The second one could be an RN, it could also be an LPN — a licensed practical nurse, or it could be a paramedic."
In speaking to reporters Wednesday, Clarke accused the government of trying to "change the rules and hope nobody else notices."
"We've heard these concerns from frontline healthcare workers flat-out. It is workers who are holding on by a thread while they take care of the people is the schedule in a local communities who are coming forward to a saying this is concerning, this is dangerous. So for the minister to come out and pretend like there is nothing to be seen here, is wrong."
On Thursday, the NDP continued to hammer the government on the issue as Clarke and Jorgenson stood alongside Pamela Bartlett, CAO of the RM of Enniskillen, in meeting reporters. In that scrum Bartlett spoke of short staffing at the health care facility in Oxbow.
"So I have taken care of many different family members and those family members, when they get displaced to other facilities, it creates a lot of havoc," said Bartlett."And so that's what we want to see at Oxbow, is we want to see our residents being able to stay in Oxbow and being able to be treated from start to finish in Oxbow as long as they're stable."
The other thing she wanted to see is one manager in their facility in Oxbow.
"When you don't have a full-time manager, you see breaks in the system and that to us is very important. "
Bartlett also spoke of the difficulties of having one nurse present.
"You know, when you are in a small facility, you aren't just a registered nurse. You help the care aides, you help the LPNs, everybody has to work together. So when you have a facility — we have 20 beds — you have that nurse is in every different room and when that nurse has an emergency come in, that is a very dangerous position to put that nurse in and they have to go home at night and they have to be able to sleep at night and if something goes wrong, that is going to stay with them forever and that could make or break that nurse's career."
Bartlett added that they wanted to "bring nurses to small communities, we don't want to drive them away. And so what I could say is that this is something we really don't want to see. I think this would be moving backwards, not forwards in our small communities."
