Sask. health unions frustrated with lack of progress addressing Saskatoon’s hospital pressures

The province’s Saskatoon Capacity Pressure Action Plan is well underway after being announced last November.

The plan is intended to relieve pressure at the city’s hospitals, as patients overcrowd the facilities and nurses struggle to keep up.

The Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) announced several measures in place as part of the plan, but the unions representing health-care workers say they aren’t meeting the system’s needs.

“There’s really no measurable change to capacity that our members our seeing,” Barbara Cape, the SEIU health care-west president, said.

The Saskatoon Capacity Pressure Action Plan reached its 30-day threshold last month, after the initial announcement in November.

“It was sort of a re-announcement of plans already in place,” Cape explained. “The first threshold talks about moving people like chess pieces throughout the health care system in order to provide care and that’s a real problem.”

In a statement at the time of the 30-day update on Dec. 19, 2023, John Ash, an executive with SHA, said “(s)ystem pressures remain in Saskatoon, but we are making progress and are grateful for the hard work underway by our teams in creating innovative solutions and making needed changes to improve care delivery.”

According to SHA, several objectives were introduced within the first 30 days, including moving current staff to acute care units, adding temporary emergency department workers and additional community transition beds at Royal University Hospital.

Global News reached out to SHA for an update on the progress they have seen in the hospitals over the last number of weeks but did not receive a response at the time of publishing.

For Tracy Zambory, she said she is glad something is being done, but the results have yet to be seen.

“What I’m hearing from the members in Saskatoon is virtually nothing has changed,” Zambory said. “We are still in dire straits. The additional positions have yet to be put in place and things are still incredibly chaotic and we still have many lines that are over capacity.”

She said until the staffing situation is resolved, problems will continue.

The SHA has previously said it will add 285 permanent and 81 temporary staff in the Saskatoon community and hospital settings.

“There’s much work to be done. And registered nurses are here ready to do. It just has not happened yet,” Zambory said.