SASK. PARTY LEAVES RURAL EMERGENCY ROOMS OPEN WITHOUT A DOCTOR IN SIGHT

Government Recommends Saskatchewan Residents in Maple Creek Area Travel to Alberta for Emergency Care

REGINA – The Sask. Party’s failure to deliver healthcare in rural communities has reached new heights, with emergency rooms operating in recent days without a single doctor on shift.

“Imagine arriving at a hospital in need of emergency care only to discover there are no doctors present,” said Keith Jorgenson, Saskatchewan NDP Associate Shadow Health Minister.

“Virtual care can be helpful in many circumstances, but there is a time and place for it. An ER is not that place.

“Every day it’s a different horror story with this government and what it tries to pass off as healthcare. This is incompetence, it’s a failure of leadership and people are going to get hurt.”

On July 18, the Southwest Integrated Healthcare Facility in Maple Creek was supposed to close for eight hours due to not having a physician available. However, a posting on the Town of Maple Creek’s Facebook page indicates the closure was averted because “SHA (Saskatchewan Health Authority) has secured a virtual physician.”

“Emergency healthcare via webcam, that’s where we’re at,” Jorgenson said. “This is ridiculous and, still, we see nothing from the Health Minister or the Premier. No plan to end this crisis, no apology to the people they’ve so deeply failed.”

The original Maple Creek closure notice went so far as to suggest people in need of care actually cross the border into Alberta and seek care in Medicine Hat.

The emergency room in Watrous is also operating today without a physician present, and services are spotty in Davidson and Kipling, Opposition researchers learned after calling the facilities earlier this morning.

Jorgenson again lashed out at the government for failing to notify the public of their healthcare failures.

“People are turning up every day to rural emergency rooms to find them closed, and now even those that are open may not have a doctor present,” he said.

“I am calling on the government to come clean today on just how many emergency rooms are ‘open’ in Saskatchewan right now without the proper frontline healthcare staff needed to provide safe and proper care.”

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