Report details capacity issues at Saskatoon, Regina emergency rooms

Demand, delays and inefficiencies are to blame for the ongoing struggles and capacity issues at major emergency rooms in the province.

Results of a review requested by Health Minister Jim Reiter late last year were released Thursday.

The review found emergency rooms in Saskatoon and Regina are favoured over other local centres for Saskatchewan residents.

“We know today that we have patients coming into Saskatoon and Regina that are literally driving by other facilities where there are other beds open,” SHA CEO Scott Livingstone said.

“All roads lead to tertiary — Saskatoon and Regina — and I think it highlights one of the areas that we’re going to be focusing on in the next few months: How we ensure that the provincial capacity that’s already available, both in acute care and other areas, is used to its maximum.”

The review also found that patients travelling to Saskatoon and Regina from other parts of the province were more likely to stay in the hospitals for longer periods of time.

The other issue Livingstone faces is the burden put on emergency rooms from people that could be better served by seeking other avenues of the healthcare system.

“I think we’ve had a lot of attempts to address emergency room waits by looking at who attends emergency rooms,” he said. “We know today that there are a lot of patients with the lowest acuity score… that really shouldn’t be attending an emergency room, but they are.

“So what is it that’s driving those people to emergency rooms? What are their care needs and how do we as an organization better serve them, because they’re obviously going there for a reason.”

American company GE Health Care also provided an independent review, citing patients in long-term care were more likely to remain in hospital beds due to a lack of available beds in long-term care facilities.

Livingstone says the SHA is picking up the pieces left by the province’s 12 healthcare regions prior to the authority’s establishment in 2017.

“This challenge isn’t about just E.Rs, and if you don’t have the community-based resources under your responsibility, I can imagine it would be more difficult to deal with it if you didn’t have the authority over the same end-to-end type of care as we do now as the SHA,” Livingstone said.

Not having one health authority over the entire province contributed to inefficiencies, something that is being addressed by the SHA’s Connected Care Strategy.

Accreditation Canada, an accreditation body conducting a review, noted that many of the issues the SHA is facing is not exclusive to Saskatchewan.