Sun Country Health Region has recently spoken about healthcare in Redvers recently regarding their plans for the imminent future.
Though emergency services and acute care has been closed, the hospital is still available for lab and xray services, long term care, as well as public health services, home care services, and therapy services.
The nurses are therefore available and able to care for people in a number of ways. One of these examples includes a doctor prescribing antibiotics which are to be administered intravenously. This can be arranged in the Redvers hospital for nurses to administer, which will save people time from travelling to another location for this service.
Currently the hospital is under construction as an addition is being built and attached to the structure already there. This project, as explained by Marga Cugnet the President and CEO of Sun Country, is approximately 85 percent complete.
This addition will open up a number of long term care beds, which will provide an opportunity to bring people closer to home.
"In the meantime in the hospital... we've had discussions with some of the community leaders about doing some temporary conversion of those closed acute care beds," Cugnet stated. "So, there were 10 acute care beds, so likely to ensure that they're all single rooms we'll likely convert seven or eight of them into multipurpose beds and we'll be using those for respite, palliative care, and some potential short term transitional care."
"So, I think this temporary conversion, it will be good to put the beds to use and it will also give us an opportunity to bring some of our residents closer to home again."
The hospital will be able to, therefore, take on patients who are in need of extra recouperation time following a surgery in Regina, for example, or those in need of a more supervisory care. The nurses in Redvers are also able to work with the Moosomin doctors, as they have been over the past year, to ensure quality care.
"We'd only be able to accept clients that would be quite stable but our nurses, they've worked with the Moosomin docs over the past year, so they certainly can continue to do the assessments and then if they require any direction from the physicians they would still be working with the physicians in Moosomin," Cugnet said.
This change will be made later this spring as some of the intended acute care beds which are going to be temporarily designated as long term care beds are closed off due to the addition being connected to the hospital.
Cugnet also spoke about the physician situation for Redvers specifically.
"First the region would like to thank Dr. Lettie for her services to the community over the past couple of years," Cugnet stated.
It is anticipated that a doctor will be in Redvers in September. He currently has a seat in SIPPA in May. As long as the assessment program goes well and the doctor is able to pass all exams he will be able to move to Redvers in the fall.
"As well, the region continues to work with, we have a locum group that we've been working with to see if we can reopen the Arcola hospital and the physician then would be a part of that oncall group in the future," Cugnet explained.
"[W]e know that this has put a lot of undue stress on the residents of the area and it's very difficult when there's a lack of services being provided. Right now as well we're also exploring whether there's a potential we could put a nurse practitioner, if there's one available, into the community [Redvers]..."
They are also planning on looking for additional staff to keep up with the increase in possible patients that can be admitted with the temporary conversion of beds in the hospital.
