The Sun Country Health Region board received a update on the proposed health region consolidations during their monthly meeting on Wednesday.
“We received information that the transition team is being formed by the province, and we understand that they will be organizing the transition work into four streams. The first stream would be governance and legislation, the second would be human resources, the third finance and the fourth clinical service,” said Marga Cugnet, president and CEO of the Sun Country Health Region.
“They have leads that are now assigned to the first three streams, and will be assigning a lead to clinical services, which is quite complex since it covers all the clinical areas across the province,” said Cugnet.
“As well, the first work that will be happening will be looking at amalgamating the information services from the regions under eHealth, and fortunately Sun Country has already pursued that, since eHealth provides our IT services.”
“I think that we will be hearing more as time rolls on. Certainly, the ministry is looking at the expertise that is out in the province to get assistance and advice from various sectors. There will more of our staff who will be involved in some of this planning.”
Cugnet said that the health regions will be receiving updates quite frequently, as the Ministry of Health works through the transition process.
“Our biggest message to our staff is that they need to continue to provide the best services, the quality services that they are providing now, to our residents and clients. That quality care is really the sustainable piece that we should remain focused on,” said Cugnet.
During the board meeting, Cugnet had noted to the board that the Ministry of Health has advised the Sun Country Health Region to prepare a 2017-2018 budget as usual.
“The Minister of Health and ministry have reassured us that this transformation will be looked at carefully, and with great consideration. They won’t be making any rash or sudden changes.”
The Sun Country Health Board is still in regular communication with the capital funding branch of the Ministry of Health, in regards to the 18-step capital funding process for the new Weyburn Hospital.
“They do have a proposal for that project for a project manager, and so we are still waiting to hear from them,” said Cugnet.
“We do appreciate that there is financial challenge for the province right now, that will likely delay some capital projects, so we just need to be patient.”
Improvements were made to the influenza immunization program for the Sun Country Health Region, during their 2016-17 flu season.
The health region is progressing with the tracking database, which will give them more up-to-date statistics on their employee immunization status, and give the immunizers the information they need, when they need it.
Sun Country is continuing to progress with moving the paper files to electronic again for easy access. Staff have met with facility managers from Stoughton, Fillmore and Coronach to begin the changes to on-site immunizers. Approximately 75 per cent of the Sun Country staff have received the influenza immunization during the flu season.
There have been 896 direct care staff, or 74 per cent, who have been educated on the long-term care program guidelines as of April 1, 2016. The goal remains to have 100 per cent educated by March 31, 2017.
Long-term care facilities have completed their data gathering and based on the data, all facilities are identifying their improvement projects, but most facilities are identifying that the importance of comparing the data to the care plans is key. This comparison allows staff to see what things may be missing from the care plan or what things will improve the resident’s quality of care.
The special care homes that are involved in purposeful interaction for the fiscal year include: Coronach Health Care, Bengough Health Care, Radville Marian Health Care, Tatagwa View in Weyburn, Wawota Memorial Health Centre and the Moose Mountain Lodge in Carlyle.
