SHA’s plan to return emergency services to Wolseley a positive for towns: Mayor

It has taken three years, but emergency services are finally set to return to Wolseley’s hospital.

In April of 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic was in its early stages, multiple small community hospitals were converted to serve specific health-care needs in order to keep Saskatchewan’s health system functioning.

Some were converted into COVID-specific spaces while the Wolseley hospital was converted to help patients seeking Long Term Care (LTC) and Alternative Level Care (ATC).

With the COVID pandemic now mostly behind us, the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) released a four-phase plan earlier this week which is aimed at getting health-care services back up and running at the facility.

It will work as follows:

Phase 1 – Partial ER resumption – Date dependent on recruitment

• In-person physician coverage Monday to Friday
• Hours of ER operation: 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday to Friday
• Requires one registered nurse (RN) and one licensed practical nurse (LPN)

Phase 2 – Extend ER hours using virtual care – date dependent on recruitment, virtual care rollout

• In-person physician coverage Monday to Friday
• Weekend physician coverage virtual with Indian Head
• Hours of ER operation: 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., seven days a week
• Requires two RNs and two LPNs

Phase 3 – Continue to increase ER services

• In-person physician coverage Monday to Friday
• Weekend and evening physician coverage virtual with Indian Head
• Hours of ER operation: 8:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., seven days a week
• Requires three RN and three LPNs

Phase 4 – Resumption of acute care and emergency services

• Acute care/observation beds resume operation
• Weekend, evening and night emergency physician coverage virtual from Indian Head
• Requires 5 RNs and 5 LPNs

Wolseley Mayor Gerald Hill says the last few years have been challenging for his community without emergency services, but says the news from the SHA is a step in the right direction.

“We’ve been working with (the SHA) for a couple years and we’ve finally managed to meet in person and nail down some of the concerns we had,” said Hill, whose community is about 100 kilometres east of Regina.

One of those concerns the town felt it had was with communication and getting the proper messaging out to the people about what exactly is going on with emergency services in their community.

“There was a lot of misinformation going around and if you cannot get ahead of that and have a plan in place that ‘This is what we’re doing,’ people are going to expect the worst. That was the expectation within our community,” Hill explained.

“We wanted to change that dialogue to ‘Yes, there is a plan in place and yes, it’s going to take some time, but we didn’t get here overnight and we aren’t going to get back to full service overnight.’ It’s really important that the message came from SHA and we support that message. We were part of that messaging as well and the importance on it.”

While there is a plan in place, it all depends on the SHA’s ability to recruit and retain staffing for the hospital.

Hill noted this will be the biggest challenge the town has to face in order to get those services back up and running.

“We’re going to be working with them and we meet with them right now once a month for updates. The first step is getting the RN and LPN. It’s all hinging on getting people to apply for these positions,” he said.

Now that there’s a full plan in place and the public knows the hospital isn’t shutting down, Hill is hopeful some with medical backgrounds in the area will apply for those positions.

“I’m hoping it will trigger some of these folks that have been kind of hanging out on the sidelines to see what will happen to apply,” Hill said. “The (more) people apply and fill these positions, the sooner we can get back to full service within the community.”

Hill noted he has been told by the SHA that some of the nurses from the Philippines will be dedicated to rural areas like Wolseley. He mentioned he was told as many as five nurses from that country could be coming to his area, but that hasn’t been confirmed by the SHA.