Aidan Jaeger
Saskatoon StarPhoenix
An investigation is in order, the provincial NDP says, after the Saskatchewan Health Authority denied that the emergency room in Herbert was closed — when, in fact, that has been the case since early August.
Last Thursday, the Opposition NDP raised alarms over the emergency room sitting closed since August 7, forcing residents from the area to drive either 50 kilometres to Swift Current and 130 kilometres to Moose for ER services. The next day, in its first response, the SHA said the ER in Herbert was not closed.
“After we released information showing that the Herbert ER had been closed for almost two full months, the SHA actually boldly came out and declared that the closed ER was in fact open. This then was shared on social media and it took the SHA four full days to correct this misinformation,” Saskatchewan NDP health critic Keith Jorgenson said.
In that initial statement denying service disruptions, the SHA said the “emergency department remains open; therefore, it has not been posted as a long-term disruption on the SHA website.”
On Monday, the SHA said service disruptions affecting diagnostic imaging and laboratory services led to a temporary closure of the emergency department.
A third statement was released Tuesday in which the SHA said the error was caused by a misunderstanding within SHA communications of service availability and that SHA takes full responsibility. The health authority said it apologizes “for any confusion or concern this created.
“Residents and patients rightly expects the information we provide to be reliable. We take this responsibility seriously and are reviewing and strengthening our communication processes to prevent a similar error from occurring again.”
For those four days, people’s lives in the Herbert district were needlessly endangered by the misinformation, Jorgenson noted.
He says he can think of a couple reasons of why this might have happened.
“It could be that somebody in the SHA deliberately lied about the status of the ER, or two, somebody in the SHA’s leadership is grossly incompetent.”
Jorgenson is asking for an independent investigation into the matter.
“I want to address the minister of health directly on this matter. My request to Minister (Jeremy) Cockrill is one, to stop disregarding the lives and safety of people in Saskatchewan … two is to immediately release all information about hospital closures and disruptions to the public in real time.” The government is not making headway and correcting the problem, Jorgenson said, noting a large rise in closures and disruptions in recent years.
“We’re headed in the wrong direction. We need to train more health care providers … we need to work on retaining them,” he said.
“Personally I think that by listening to people, by asking them what they require to do their jobs or at least in the end term, would stand some of the hemorrhaging that we have on their attention set.”
Jorgenson said it’s “inconceivable” to him that something like this would happen “and that somebody would not be more careful, especially when we now have pointed out three times where the SHA has directed people to a closed hospital from one closed hospital to another.”
He says that it is concerning that vacancy in Herbert may not be filled until spring.
“That could be the difference between somebody surviving a critical incident.”
