Residents in and around the Preeceville trading area met at the Preeceville Legion Hall to discuss the issue of emergency services and actute beds at the Preeceville and District Health Centre.
Approximately 150 people were in attendance on September 5 when the Preeceville and District Health Action Committee sponsored the event.
Brad Romanchuk chaired the meeting. James Bodnar and Stacey Strykowki each spoke briefly.
"Tonight we are here with an update," said Strykowski. "We may not have many answers for you. In fact, we may leave you tonight with many more questions than you had before you’ve heard any of us speak.
"We have spent countless hours doing research, conducting interviews, holding meetings and compiling data to help our community in the fight to save our hospital,” she said. “But now we need your help too.”
Since May 2016, the committee has been rallying to regain emergency services and actute beds at the Preeceville Hospital.
Much of the problem is lack of communication between the Sunrise Health Region and the community or public as a whole, including the physicians and nurses that work in the facility, it was said.
This past month, the health region reminded the group that following considerable discussions and communications with numerous stakeholders, including the Ministry of Health, mayor and town council of Preeceville, it had announced a temporary change in services which included the suspension of acute inpatient admissions and emergency room services.
No meetings were ever held before that time to discuss the future of the facility and council’s opinion on shutting the doors, Strykowski said. They were told the same evening as hospital staff that this would happen in two weeks and that was that.”
The commitee had worked tirelessly to organize a chartered bus to go to the provincial legislature full of people demanding answers to hospital services.
The group took to social media to reach out to countless individuals to have their story heard.
Sunrise Health Region representatives met with the Preeceville council in January when they advised they would be granting emergency room hours of 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday to Friday and 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on weekends. This would also include extended clinic hours and the addition of “flex beds.”
“From the information we have gathered from numerous sources, it would appear this term “flex bed” is something Sunrise has made up,” she said.
"We as a community and the physicians themselves were led to believe that these four flex beds would be a gateway to acute care,” she said. “After all, they told us these beds were available to ‘respite, palliative and alternate levels of care.’”
The information received was incorrect and nothing had actually changed, she said. All along, since June 1, 2016 (the day these temporary changes took effect), those beds were deemed flex beds by the region and were for respite, palliative and LTC patients only, not acute care.
“Keep in mind, no one told us we had flex beds before January. We weren’t told any different when they gave us the news of these four beds in January, even when we questioned who could stay in them.
“These beds in our acute wing aren’t free either. We are actually making the region money. You need to pay for respite, palliative and LTC beds regardless where they are situated whereas the government funds the acute beds.
“We were given the good news about the extended hours and also notified of a ‘schedule change’ for the nurses. Sunrise changed the schedule for the RNs so there would never be 24-hour RN coverage. There is a point of time between 6:30 a.m. and 8 a.m. when no RN is scheduled. Because of this, acute admissions are just not safe for the patient, for the staff and for the facility.”
The problem seems to be that the facility is dangerously understaffed with RNs and without the doctor on call 24/7 for acute care, people shouldn’t have been admitted here as their conditions were not stable or could not be predicted to stay the same and not worsen, she said.
“So, the environment we thought was a step in the right direction to having our ER and acute care fully back, was actually incredibly unsafe for everyone involved.
“When the union questioned the health region, the region did not make any effort to change policy or work with the situation. The region simply told the doctors they could no longer admit to these flex beds unless they were respite, palliative or long term care.
“This caused some anger, confusion and upset within the facility itself and the community,” she said. “We must remember this is not the fault of the doctors or the nurses. They were given little direction for this situation to begin with and only want to provide safe care for the citizens of Preeceville and surrounding area.”
Sunrise described the facility has having 53.2 per cent of interrupted services between March 2010 and March 2016 which accounts to 972.5 days without ER services, she said. “It does not mention that for most of this time, we only had one physician who could not physically be on call 24/7, 365 days a year.
“This change to our hospital was purposed as a temporary change until consistent and sustainable on-call coverage was secured.”
Effective October 11, 2016, Preeceville obrained three physicians and a nurse practitioner, she said. However, just as predicted, as the doctors were showing up, the nursing staff was slowly decreasing.
"We are now short four RNs for the acute side of the facility and there are currently no postings for any,” she said. “We were told there is a hiring freeze for RNs, but apparently this only applies to the acute side, as they are currently looking for two permanent full time RNs and two permanent part time RNs for the long term care (LTC) side of the facility as well as a permanent casual LPN for LTC.
Physicians Dr. Morteza Zahmitkesh Shahrestani, Dr. Shamsher Singh and Dr. Catharina Meyer along with nurse practioner Dawn Kennedy are committed to staying here, she said. "They love our community and the great people who live in it.”
Staff numbers within the facility are dwindling, she said. Nurses here now, had wanted to be acute care nurses and are being forced to work long term care. They are not able to use the skills they have acquired. They are fearful of job loss. Travel nurses contracts have been cut short so the nurses cannot take holidays.
"And we now know this temporary situation was supposed to be permanent. We would have been permanently a doctor’s office with a LTC facility attached effective June 1, 2016. We were very lucky we stood up when we did and took action as quickly as we did. The government told us we will get our 10 acute beds back. We need to hold it to that.
“We need to push harder than ever to make sure the situation we are in now does not become a permanent one," Strykowski said.
