The Saskatchewan Health Authority is changing how it updates residents about emergency room closures in the province.
Beginning next week, the health authority is expected to begin posting daily updates of all reported disruptions to emergency services in Saskatchewan, improving on the current system that only provides updates on service disruptions that have been ongoing for a week or longer.
In response to a question from the Opposition NDP in the legislature on Thursday about notifying residents about emergency room closures, Minister of Health Jeremy Cockrill pointed to a news release that had just been released.
“I have heard directly from community members and community leaders across the province this summer that there were frustrations around the notification process for disruptions,” said Cockrill.
“This is why I tasked the Saskatchewan Health Authority with coming up with a new process.”
The Saskatchewan NDP has been drawing attention to many of the service disruptions in recent months, including in a news release on Oct. 14 — following the Thanksgiving long weekend — that said the provincial health authority was “recklessly” redirecting patients in Kipling from the town’s closed emergency room to Arcola’s emergency room, which was also closed.
Cockrill said later Thursday his request to the health authority was driven by feedback from Saskatchewan residents, not calls from the NDP.
In its news release Thursday, the health authority said emergency service closures can be caused by staff and physician vacancies, unplanned absences, scheduled vacations or facility or equipment upgrades.
Jared Clarke, the NDP’s rural health critic, said the new notification policy doesn’t go far enough. He pointed to hundreds of instances of emergency room closures, varying in length, during the past couple of years.
He said the Saskatchewan government should pass his private member’s bill, introduced Thursday, which specifies the public would be notified of a hospital emergency room closure in the province “within one hour of the provincial health authority approving the closure.”
The change announced by the health authority on Thursday said updates will be provided once daily at 4 p.m. CST on its website, starting next week.
When asked if the new system could be improved to update closures in real time, Cockrill said there needs to be a balance in what priorities the health authority pursues.
