Kamsack hospital loses a number of services due to staffing shortage

The health-care situation in Kamsack is not great, according to the town’s mayor.

The hospital lost its last five acute-care beds and the emergency room is running on limited hours from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays and from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays.

That means anyone who needs hospital care will need to be transported to Canora, Preeceville, Wadena, Yorkton, Regina or Saskatoon depending on the situation.

Kamsack Mayor Nancy Brunt says the situation is pretty bad.

“Our ambulances are pushed to their limits right now. Their staff are burnt out because they’re constantly on the road transferring patients,” Brunt said.

And the people living in the town are not happy about it, especially after Minister of Rural and Remote Health Everett Hindley and Canora-Pelly MLA Terry Dennis visited and toured the hospital on Thursday.

“(Residents) are very upset, they’re angry and they’re extremely concerned and worried,” Brunt said, adding the emergency room is one of the busiest in the area as it serves multiple First Nations, rural municipalities and a provincial park.

She added the closure makes it more challenging for community members to get the care they need because of certain hurdles.

“We have a lot of seniors here who can’t or won’t drive on the highway, which puts extreme pressure on our ambulance services,” Brunt said.

Some of the seniors also don’t have the means to pay for the cost of an ambulance to transport them for the care they need.

Brunt met with Hindley and Dennis after their tour of the hospital and said she couldn’t pull any positives from their meeting as there were no timelines of when solutions would be coming.

She said there’s a nursing shortage across Canada and the province and a majority of nurses would rather work in the city rather than in a rural community.

But she did offer that, with the cost of living now, living in a small town would provide relief financially.

Hindley has said the government will be working to restore proper staffing at the hospital to end the temporary closures and bring it back to full capacity.