REGINA — An Opposition bill requiring real-time emergency room closure reporting has cleared second reading at the Legislature on Thursday.
The Provincial Health Authority ER Closure Right to Know Amendment Act, put forward by the NDP’s Jared Clarke, received support from both Opposition and government MLAs on Thursday in a vote of 47-0.
The bill now heads to committee and could be passed in third reading as early as next week, though it is unclear whether there could yet be further amendments to the bill prior to final passage.
According to an NDP news release, Clarke’s bill would require an emergency room closure anywhere in Saskatchewan to be reported publicly through a website or other electronic means within one hour of a shutdown.
Clarke had announced intentions to introduce a bill on hospital disruptions last fall following a series of SHA reporting issues in which patients were redirected to ERs in other rural communities that were actually closed at the time.
The Sask Party government has since made some moves to improve reporting of hospital closures. Starting in November, the SHA began posting all emergency service disruptions, regardless of length, on its website, with updates happening daily at 4 p.m., seven days a week.
During debate on Thursday, Sask Party MLA for Moosomin-Montmartre Kevin Weedmark voiced support for the current updates. He pointed out the SHA already notifies the public on service disruptions through the emergency services disruption process and postings on the SHA website. Weedmark also said disruptions are reflected on individual pages for facilities on the SHA website and that HealthLine 811 has real-time information on the availability of emergency services around the province.
The Opposition NDP has said the SHA changes do not go far enough. Clarke continued to push for his bill in speaking to reporters Thursday prior to the vote.
“The government’s current way of communicating ER closures in rural Saskatchewan is simply to post them at 4 p.m. each day,” Clarke said.
“This is not live. This is not real time. People in rural Saskatchewan who are experiencing an emergency in that moment don’t know whether their local ER is open. This is a problem that we have been talking about for months. This bill will give rural residents, people of Saskatchewan, critical information in the event of an emergency whether or not they should go to their local ER because they will know whether it’s open or closed in that moment.”
