The Regina General Hospital is temporarily closing an intensive care bed, following months of staff shortages.
According to an internal Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) memo released Wednesday by the Sask. NDP, one ICU bed was closed as of June 30 and won’t reopen until Sept. 5.
“This government has broken our health care system,” health critic Vicki Mowat said. “We know their current plan is not working when we see ICU beds closing at the Regina General Hospital. Intensive care is not optional. We’re talking about life and death.”
The memo says employee shortages have made it difficult to staff the unit. It outlines the hospital has instead relied on contracts for staff, but a number have been cancelled at the last minute.
“They (the government) have relied on these contractors, but as they’ve said, it’s a temporary solution,” Mowat said. “But we don’t see them coming up with a long-term solution.”
And while Mowat outlined there are benefits to having contract nurses, it is concerning to see so many contracts being turned away and that they are paid higher than full-time employees for the same amount of work.
NDP Leader Carla Beck said it shows that the Sask. Party government has been saying one thing publicly about health care, while something different is going on behind the scenes.
“What have we heard from Scott Moe and this health minister? We hear that everything is just fine, that they’ve got a plan and that their plan is working. The fact is their plan is not working — far from it,” said Beck.
Beck said the government needs to do a better job of retaining current health care workers already in the system and needs to work with nurses to find a solution.
“What we hear time and time again from health care workers in this province is the government shows no interest in getting to the table with them,” Beck said. “(They) seem more interested in providing a tag line ‘the most ambitious plan ever,’ and repeating it while our wait times get longer and longer and we lose more health-care workers from the system.”
In a statement from the Ministry of Health, they said the temporary closure of the bed won’t impact patient care, as the bed wasn’t being used.
“(The) Medicine Intensive Care Unit (MICU) occupancy at Regina General Hospital is currently 7/9 beds or 78% occupancy,” the statement read. “This is an average occupancy rate for this unit and it is anticipated that the closure of one MICU bed will not impact patient care.”
In terms of contracted staffing, the Ministry of Health said they are used in situations where there are prolonged vacancies at any of the facilities in the province.
Since December 2022, the SHA has hired nearly 490 grad nurses from the province and across Canada.
“New grad nurses are working across the province with many being hired in rural and remote locations, which helps stabilize staffing in communities experiencing service disruptions and reduces pressures on major centres,” the province said.
The province said of the 250 new full-time permanent positions created in the province, almost 160 have been filled.
“In late August, Saskatchewan will implement an accelerated, streamlined pathway for internationally educated nurses that shortens licensure timeframes from months to 14 weeks,” the statment read. “To date, the SHA has recruited nearly 400 RNs from the Philippines that are currently at various stages of the RN Pathway.”