SHA adds community, long-term and transitional beds to ease capacity concerns

The Saskatchewan Health Authority provided an update Thursday on the progress it’s making on its Saskatoon and Regina capacity pressures action plans.

Andrew Will, the CEO of the health authority, said more than 150 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff have been hired, including 60 nurses. Efforts are underway to also recruit another 300 staff and 107 FTE nurses.

“We’ve also progressed (with) a total of 206 additional beds in (the) community that will help transition patients into a convalescent care or long-term care,” he said.

That means what Will calls a “more appropriate” setting for those patients, allowing people waiting for a bed in emergency rooms to be admitted into an acute-care bed.

By June, Will said, Saskatoon will have another 84 long-term care beds open in addition to 75 convalescent beds that were added since November.

In Regina, another 20 permanent transitional beds will become available in May in a currently vacant wing at Lutheran Home.

Health care got the largest portion of spending in the provincial budget released Wednesday, with $4.7 billion set aside for the SHA.

Over the last year, there have been several instances in both Saskatoon and Regina where fire departments have been alerted to severe overcrowding issues in emergency rooms, or a “bypass” has been instituted to send all but the most critically ill patients to other hospitals.

In February, nurses made a “stop the line” call at St. Paul’s Hospital after a life-threatening patient situation developed in the emergency room.

Will said the improvements that are being made don’t happen right away.

“It’s continued efforts (and) it’s continued progress,” he said. “It’s focusing on so many things: Can we divert patients to more appropriate care settings that may not actually need acute care emergency room settings?”

Overcrowding issues have improved in Regina, he said.

“We’ve reached a point in Regina with the hospitals there where we are able to provide care in appropriate settings,” he said.

But the challenges to get patients into appropriate care settings remain in Saskatoon.

John Ash, the vice-president of Integrated Health in Saskatoon, said the SHA is working with the Saskatoon Tribal Council at St. Paul’s Hospital as well to ease the overcrowding and overcapacity issues there.

“We know we have individuals that are presenting to our waiting room at St. Paul’s Hospital and at RUH (Royal University Hospital) that aren’t necessarily seeking medical care, like emergency department medical care (but) perhaps a place to warm up, or they have kind of chronic related health-care needs that could better be supported in a community setting,” he explained.

The STC is connecting with some of those people and offering them transport to either a warming centre or another health-care facility rather than using the emergency room setting.

“It frees up our waiting room for people that are trying to access the emergency department, so there’s clear space,” he added.

SHA chief operating officer Derek Miller said the authority is monitoring capacity in hospitals and emergency departments on a daily basis, and there will be ebbs and flows like seasonal viruses and weather conditions that can create spikes.

“We are monitoring that multiple times a day,” he said.

Miller said the SHA is seeing some early signals of progress, with 40 to 60 more beds freed up overall in acute-care settings.