The Arcola Health Centre is among the sites in the province that will have emergency and acute care services temporarily disrupted.
The disruption will take effect on May 14.
Arcola was included in the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) COVID-19 surge plan, which included the conversion community hospitals to Alternate Level of Care (ALC) sites on a temporary basis.
“The reason we are taking this temporary measure is to ensure we have capacity to address potential surge in COVID-19 cases,” the Saskatchewan Health Authority said in an email to the Mercury.
ALC refers to a patient that could be cared for in an alternate setting, rather than an acute care setting. This would refer to palliative, convalescing, respite, rehab or long-term care patients.
The identified hospitals will be temporarily closed to acute care admissions and will only accept admissions to ALC. Emergency services in these locations will also be temporarily disrupted and will not be available at these facilities.
“This measure is necessary to help us protect our most vulnerable populations. It will reduce traffic within these community hospitals, and will support the cohorting of staff, which reduces the risk of exposure,” the SHA said.
“This measure will also help us to increase capacity in our other sites for the potential COVID-19 surge in cases. Keeping patients and staff safe and healthy continues to be our number one priority.”
The Galloway Health Centre in Oxbow was among the hospitals included in the plan, but services are not scheduled to be affected on May 14.
In case of an emergency, people who live in the identified communities are asked to call 911. EMS will assess the patient, initiate treatment and transport to the most appropriate facility to provide further care for the patient’s illness or injury. Alternatively, the patient could go to their nearest available emergency department. Non-urgent health related questions can be directed to HealthLine 811. This is the same process that would be in place in the case of a regular emergency services disruption at a community hospital.
SHA CEO Scott Livingstone addressed the conversion during Wednesday’s provincial COVID-19 press conference. He described them as a defensive strategy associated with both the COVID-19 response and also related to building capacity to restart the healthcare system.
The health authority also wants to protect those residents in long-term care that are in integrated facilities.
“This was announced weeks ago. There have been discussions with local communities and mayors around this and when we said we were going to implement it in four to six weeks, we started doing that last week and that is where we are today.”
Once they restart the healthcare system next week, the SHA will be watching what happens across the province, with respect to the mixing of individuals and reduced restrictions.
The announcement has received considerable attention on social media from people in southeast Saskatchewan, with some critical of the move, and one person explained how having the emergency department in Arcola, combined with the level of care at the health centre, save the life of her one-year-old son.
